Campbell University | 125 Years

Campbell University Celebrating 125 years of faith, learning, and service

Buies Creek, North Carolina

Campbell University Celebrating 125 years of faith, learning, and service 1887-2012

Celebrating 125 years

125th Anniversary History Book Committee Dr. James Martin, Committee Chair Ms. Kendra Erickson Ms. Haven Hottel Dr. Lloyd Johnson Dr. Ed Johnson Dr. John Roberson Dr. Michael Smith

Additional Contributors Mr. Stan Cole Ms. Cherry Crayton Mr. Billy Liggett Mrs. Dorothea Stewart-Gilbert

125th Anniversary Committee Dr. John Roberson, Committee Chair Faithe Beam Lynn Brinkley Renee Green Mark Hammond Lloyd Johnson Doug Jones Shariar Mostashari

Copyright Š 2012 by Campbell University

Celebrating 125 years Campbell University’s journey of faith, learning, and service

Narrative written by Dr. Lloyd Johnson, Professor of History Designed by Jonathan Bronsink, Senior Graphic Designer

Compiling a record of the first 125 years of Campbell University’s history is a daunting task. For more than a year, a team of Campbell University staff and faculty members have pored over University records, photographs, slides, yearbooks, catalogs, community anecdotes, and personal interviews to create a snapshot of this great institution.

A glance through the text makes it clear that Campbell has been influenced by hundreds of men and women who served selflessly to ensure the education of young people over the decades. Enclosed in the following narrative is just a mere sample of those people who have contributed to Campbell’s legacy and paved the path for its future.

To the countless benefactors, faculty and staff members, community leaders, alumni, students, parents, and friends—we thank each of you for making Campbell great. We are truly Campbell Proud.

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Humble Beginnings  1887-2012 

n January 5, 1887, huddled inside a small church in Harnett County, sixteen students and their twenty-fiveyear-old teacher, James Archibald Campbell, sang out the hymn “Jesus, Savior, Pilot Me,” as they would every morning thereafter. Five other students were building the nearby schoolhouse that would become Buies Creek Academy—a place where students from all walks of life could come to learn and have the opportunity to grow in their faith.

Today, the University is comprised of seven schools: College of Arts and Sciences, College of Pharmacy & Health Sciences, Divinity School, LundyFetterman School of Business, School of Education, Norman Adrian Wiggins School of Law, and its newest school, the School of Osteopathic Medicine. In April 2012, the medical school was awarded provisional accreditation clearing the path to begin recruiting students for its first class in 2013. In addition to the main campus in Buies Creek, Campbell has additional campuses in the Research Triangle Park, Camp Lejeune, and Fort Bragg/Pope AFB and maintains a degree program at Tunku Abdul Rahman College in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. In 2009, the law school relocated to downtown Raleigh.

Just one year earlier, Campbell returned home to his native Harnett County from his studies at Wake Forest College, working as a pastor and selling books to help out the family farm. When approached by community leaders about the critical need for a local school, Campbell readily committed himself to the challenge, despite the absence of a salary. But the young minister felt it was an important mission to provide a quality Christian education for the children of this rural community.

Proud of its heritage, Campbell remains committed to its mission of providing students with a Christian worldview and a charge to be “the salt of the earth and the light of the world.”

Campbell’s enthusiastic approach to instruction was a well-received addition to the area. By the end of the term in May 1887, the Academy’s enrollment had grown significantly, from those first sixteen students to ninety-two students, now packed into a one-room, forty-by-twenty-two foot school building.

Many of Campbell’s programs are nationally recognized, including law, pharmacy, business, education and divinity, as well as its ROTC program.

Campbell is also a Teaching Fellows institution and holds the distinction of having one of only twenty PGA Golf Management Programs in the country and the only undergraduate Trust and Wealth Management program nationwide.

Since Dr. Campbell held the first class inside that church 125 years ago, Campbell University has become a lauded institution of liberal arts, sciences, and professions.

Left: 1894 Buies Creek Academy

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The J.A. Campbell Era  1887-1934 

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he year 2012 marks the 125th year of Campbell University.

The University was founded by James Archibald “J.A.” Campbell on January 5, 1887, in the rural Harnett County community of Buies Creek, North Carolina. Only seven families were living there when Campbell, a twenty-five-year-old, second-year student at Wake Forest College, sought to earn money in the summer of 1886 to support himself and his family by canvassing the neighborhood selling books. Along the way, he met William Pearson, who convinced some of his fellow residents to establish an academy in Buies Creek. The members of the community provided one acre of land near the Baptist Church and $350 for the construction of a one-room, forty-by-twenty-two-foot school building. While the community folk lacked the funds to provide for Campbell’s salary as principal, they allowed him to derive his salary from the Academy’s tuition. 1

A slender six-footer with red hair, J.A. Campbell (1862-1934) descended from the Highland Scots who migrated to North Carolina in the eighteenth century. He possessed an early interest in education and a love for preaching. In his youth, he attended the old Harnett Chapel School, and began his career as a teacher of penmanship in Alamance County, where he taught for two years. In 1884, he became the principal of Union Academy in Winslow, just ten miles north of Lillington. During the summer months, he attended the normal institutes conducted by Edwin A. Alderman, J. Y. Joyner, Charles B. Aycock, and other prominent North Carolina educators.

In the summer of 1886, Campbell, like his father, became an ordained Baptist minister and served as pastor of Hector’s Creek Baptist Church.

Left: J.A. Campbell in front of the first building at Buies Creek Academy.

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He married William Pearson’s daughter, Cornelia Pearson of Buies Creek, in 1890. Their home, completed in 1891, was a large vernacular farm house situated a quarter of a mile west of what is now the University’s main campus.

The Campbells were the parents of three children: Leslie Hartwell Campbell, Arthur Carlyle Campbell, and Bessie Campbell Lynch. 2,3 In the beginning days, Buies Creek Academy (BCA) had just three faculty members: J.A. Campbell was principal; A. E. Booth, a graduate of the Nashville Normal College, served as assistant and teacher of the Normal Department and Business College; and Cornelia F. Pearson was an assistant and teacher in the Primary Department. The 1887 catalog lauded the rural location: “Being in the country, we avoid many of the temptations incident to towns and cities and save our patrons much extravagance in dress.” The first catalog noted that “Poe’s Post Office has recently been established within a few hundred yards of the academy.” The year 1887 also witnessed the founding of the Philadelphian Literary Society. Meetings took place on Friday nights and offered “good opportunities for young men to improve in public speaking.”4 The first commencement took place on May 20, 1887, and every student participated in the program. Josephus Daniels of Raleigh, an editor of the State Chronicle and later owner of The Raleigh News & Observer, delivered the main address. Upon his return to Raleigh, he described his impressions of the Academy: Among my pleasant memories of a trip to Harnett, none are more cherished by me with more fondness than the enjoyment of the excellent commencement exercise at Buies Creek Academy.

It was a rare feast. The scholars are not prodigies; they do not surpass other boys and girls in the state, but they recite with ease, enunciate with distinctiveness, and gave choice sections of music and evidence the good training they had received. There was an absence of straining after effect, which was refreshing. There was simplicity and a regard for the fitness of things that are charming.

There was an order and arrangement that showed a thoughtful and sensible management. I congratulate the people of Harnett on the excellent advantages Buies Creek Academy offers for the education of the children of the rising generation.5

Above: Mr. and Mrs. William Pearson, parents of Cornelia Pearson Campbell, 1800s. Right: Students in front of Buies Creek Academy (1899).

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Thirteen years later, in 1900, Daniels made another commencement address with reference to his 1887 visit: There were no less than a thousand people present, gathered to cheer the young teacher in his noble undertaking. The parents seeing the eagerness, with which their children learned their lessons, felt that it was no ordinary man who had the training of their offspring. The older men, seeing the practical methods, sublime faith, and marvelous industry, said, “He is made of the right stuff,” and they held up his hands.6 Dr. J. C. Kilgo, the president of Trinity College, now Duke University, delivered the commencement address in May 1896. Upon his return to Durham, he thanked J. A. Campbell and observed: Buies Creek Academy is worthy of a people’s confidence and esteem. It is well located, and the buildings are admirably suited to the best academic work. The methods are up to the best, and the spirit of the school is entirely educational.7 The 1890s brought continued growth to the Academy. A library was added and subscribers who donated books or monetary gifts had their names listed in the next year’s catalog. By 1893, the library contained more than fivehundred volumes; and before the building burned in 1900, there were 1,500.

In 1896, the academy erected a two-and-a-half-story wooden structure that connected to the original forty-by-twenty-two-foot building. Previously, a small music building had been constructed some distance to the rear of the original structure. “Combined, the two buildings were impressive” and expanded to a length of 136 feet. The classrooms included blackboards, desks, charts, and globes; and the literary societies were well furnished with carpeted floors.8 By 1896, the academy possessed three buildings, including a large wooden tabernacle that could hold close to two-thousand people for commencement. In 1898, the school added a museum; the room contained a large collection of fossils donated by Dr. William Louis Poteat, a professor of biology at Wake Forest College.9 Of the 226 students enrolled in the academy in 1896, 102 were boarding students. The latter resided in the homes of private families, where “students find all the comforts, restraints and safeguards of home life.” A

Left: Faculty for Buies Creek Academy (circa 1900). Right: First commencement program (May 1887).

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The Rules of Government 1. We will not play cards or any games of chance.

2. We will not carry concealed weapons.

3. We will not use profanity.

4. We will not drink wine, whiskey, or other intoxicants, except it be in cases of dangerous sickness, or as prescribed by a physician.

5. We will not accompany the opposite sex to or from school.

6. We will neither write nor pass notes.

7. We will not use tobacco in school rooms nor smoke in or around buildings.

8. We will not mark, cut or in any way deface the school furniture or buildings and will pay for all damages done to property by us.

9. We will refrain from all whispering or talking during school hours, except by permission, and then will not disturb those around us.

10. During the school hours we will not be away from our study-rooms, except for recitation or by permission, and then will promptly return.

11. At night we will not be away from our boarding places after dark, except by the principal or his representative.

12. We will endeavor to refrain from any conduct, either in or out of school, known to us to be damaging to ourselves or the interests of the school.

— Buies Creek Academy Catalog, 1895-1896.13

Above: A student wearing a military uniform (1904). Half of the students at BCA wore uniforms to participate in military drills.

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club house (built in 1894) contained six rooms where young men could board and was located in the back of J.A. Campbell’s house.10 The year 1895 witnessed the establishment of two enthusiastic and well-organized literary societies, Eutrophian and Philogian. These societies met weekly and members conducted debates, read essays and declamations, and held business meetings.

Rules that governed the academy forbade use of profanity, wine, or other intoxicants; talking or whispering during school hours; and accompanying the opposite sex to or from school.

While J.A. Campbell proved a strict disciplinarian, he was also “seasoned in common sense and humor.” Moreover, “the records also indicate that there was very little resentment on the part of students to these rules and regulations.”14

The academy embraced a military component in 1896. J.A. Campbell and the faculty realized the importance of physical exercise and introduced the military drill for the purpose of “cultivating attention, improving the appearance of the student and obtaining valuable exercise.” The young men were not required to purchase uniforms, but half of the students did. The uniforms consisted of a nice quality of gray wool that “with cap costs $10.00.” Guns were not used in the military drills, “and [students did] not take one minute of time from study to engage in drill.” Instead of playing baseball, marching exercises took place in the evening at the end of the school day.11

Like Campbell University’s motto Ad Astra per Aspera, “to the stars through difficulties,” the twentieth century ushered in hardships that led to considerable changes. On the evening of December 20, 1900, a suspicious fire destroyed the Academy and all the buildings except for the large wooden tabernacle. Awakened at 3:30 a.m. to witness the destruction, J.A. Campbell recalled: When I ran up to the fire, the terrible fire, that was burning down chances for poor boys and girls, and I knew that I could not build again…the flames that destroyed the labor of years…the only hope for hundreds of boys and girls was being swept away, I could not bear up longer. . . . When they asked me my plans, I said, “Well [sic] there’s no chance to go on.”15

In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, commencement exercises marked the high point of the school year. Cornelia Campbell, the wife of the founder, later recalled how the brush arbor covered in rough domestic muslin protected the speakers from the hot Harnett County sun. She remembered sewing “yards of cloth to make a canopy for the arbor.” At commencement, thousands of people poured into Buies Creek. Some came for the day and others to visit relatives and friends; many took part in the full program. They would “come in buggies and wagons and it was a great time, but the meats were prepared the day before.” Mrs. Campbell also recalled attending an early commencement that ended in a downpour of rain. There were no bridges over the creeks and the people could not get across the flooded waterways. “That was the time we had over eighty folks for breakfast!! Mr. Campbell was so big-hearted he asked them all to come to breakfast. . . . Miss Humy and I pitched in and cooked and cooked that morning. . . . Mr. Campbell thought of it as just a big picnic and laughed and joked and said the rain had brought us all closer together.”12

After the fire, Zachary Taylor Kivett came to visit and found Campbell “in bed discouraged to the limit.” Kivett said, “Why are you in bed? You’re a Campbell. Get a hump on you.” It’s commonly believed that this is how Campbell University’s unusual mascot, the Fighting Camel, originated.

Kivett also made a pledge to J.A. Campbell to construct a new stronger, sturdier brick building on the campus. He moved his family from across the river to a shanty near the academy and constructed a mill about two miles from the school. Its purpose was making bricks for the new building.16 By now, Campbell had made the decision to close the Academy; but students were determined to keep it open, and they passed a resolution to make the tabernacle suitable for classes to resume in January.17 Josephus Daniels, the editor of The News & Observer, devoted significant coverage to this great tragedy and students’ efforts to keep it open, including printing the entire resolution in a letter to the editor:

At its inception, Buies Creek Academy was not a denominational school, but the school did emphasize moral training and its influence on the formation of good character. As stated in the catalog, “We appeal for patronage solely on the ground of merit and our patronage from six of the leading denominations of our country is the best evidence of our success.”

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Pupils of Buies Creek academy appeal to aid in worthy cause To the Editor: Buies Creek Academy, the largest preparatory school in North Carolina, was consumed by flames at 4 o’clock on the morning of December 20, 1900….

Resolved, 1. That we the students of Buies Creek Academy do hereby extend our deepest sympathies to the principal and faculty of our much loved and excellent institution. We pray that God may visit them by his spirit, and teach them to be resigned amid tragedy.

2. That we will ever stand by, and uphold the excellent Christian faculty for their kindness and for the many help extended for the poor boys and girls of our state, by our principal.

3. That we feel that the trouble and loss is not only upon the students, faculty and community in the Christian work but upon the entire state, and therefore we appeal to every generous-hearted educator and Christian worker to support this institution, and see that it is rebuilt; for nothing could do more for the glory of God and the cause of education.

4. That we the student will use every effort to raise by contribution, in our respective communities, funds to rebuild, and extend the work of the institution. We pledge our loyal support to extend its patronage. May God put it into the hearts of the people of our respective communities, and state, to rally to the support of this most excellent.18 Daniels’ paper further declared in an editorial that J.A. Campbell had built “one of the leading academies in the state. No man living in North Carolina has wrought more nobly and unselfishly to educate the people than Prof.

Campbell. Public spirited men ought to rally to his assistance in rebuilding.”19 And rally they did. Support to rebuild the academy came from many prominent figures throughout the state and included such men as J.W. Bailey, the editor of the Biblical Recorder and a future U.S. Senator, and Charles W. Taylor, the president of Wake Forest College, who was so deeply

Left: A suspicious fire burned the original Buies Creek Academy schoolhouse. All that was left standing was the large wooden tabernacle (December 1900).

Right: Z.T. Kivett and his family moved to the site of the Academy to rebuild. He constructed a brick kiln (top right) and a lumber mill (bottom right) to assist with the work (1901).

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Z.T. Kivett

“A Grand Old Man” The morning after a fire destroyed nearly every building at Buies Creek Academy in December 1900, Z.T. Kivett pledged to the school’s president, J.A. Campbell, that he would “rebuild in brick a more suitable” school. A self-taught architect and contractor who lived along the Cape Fear River about six miles from the academy, Kivett had built the school’s tabernacle, the only edifice to survive the fire.

In its aftermath, he quickly constructed a “shanty” on the school’s campus and moved his wife, two sons, and oldest daughter into the temporary housing in less than a day’s time. Over the next 478 days, he oversaw and supervised nearly every aspect of the academy’s reconstruction, from drawing plans and making brick to sawing the lumber and mixing sand and lime. Within the first few days alone, he had developed the plans to renovate the tabernacle so it could be temporarily used for classroom space; he had arranged for wagons to deliver lumber; and he had brought in carpenters to get to work. By January 8, 1901, the tabernacle was open to classes. “A steam engine in britches” and “a grand old man,” Kivett had been called.

He also sold a hundred acres of his own farmland to cover much of the rebuilding costs. “To give this service we neglected our own farm,” he had said. In 1903, a large brick building to house the academy was completed. The school named it in honor of Kivett.

“To Mr. Z.T. Kivett, who came and took charge of the matter of planning and pushing the work. . . .we desire to return our sincere and heartfelt thanks,” Campbell wrote in his newspaper The Little River Record.

Top: Z.T. Kivett and his family (1900s). Kivett and his children lived in a shanty (bottom) on the site as they oversaw the rebuilding of the school house.

Right: BCA students pose outside the partially reconstructed Kivett Building (1902).

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moved that he read The News & Observer article aloud to his family. John A. Oates, editor of the North Carolina Baptist, said “the ashes of the school should be the principal’s inspiration . . . [and]BCA would be greater than ever before.”20 The local Harnett County Banner also came to the support of Academy. The editor wrote that “the fire had swept away the gem and pride of the county. . . . It was there that the priceless gem of thought and culture was molded, intellects were expanded, men and women were prepared to meet the obligations of life, the moral status elevated, upon which no financial value can be placed.”21

catalog noted, “It is built of beautiful brick, made on our own grounds, and is an everlasting monument to the love, loyalty, and sacrifices of our friends . . . [who] are in itself a constant inspiration to live something high and noble, and to undertake the impossible.” The catalog added that Buies Creek Academy and Business College was “a leading preparatory school with military features, business, shorthand, typewriting, telegraphy, art, music and normal departments.”24 Early catalogs acclaimed the academy’s rural location in a village of 250 people for “having no lounging or sightseeing places . . . [and] few causes to divert the mind from study” like a railroad town might have. Still, a vibrant social life on the campus developed.25 There was a YMCA for men and a YWCA for women, as well as literary societies, and popular sports including baseball, tennis, and other games. By the 1910s there were two athletic fields on campus, one reserved for men and the other for women. The academy also boasted tennis courts and a track field. By 1911 basketball had become a popular sport among the students of both genders.

Students participated in intramurals; they could also compete with other schools but had to return to campus the day of the game. With regard to baseball, the Pine Burr staff in 1912 noted that “Buies Creek can honestly say that she had a good team during the Fall. She did not lose a single game. She won two shut outs, one at Duke [Erwin], Upchurch allowing only one hit, score 2-0; the other B.C.A. against Benson, Upchurch allowing three hits, score 6 to 0.”

J.A. Campbell received numerous offers to relocate the Academy to other parts of the state, but he rejected the overtures. As editor of The Little River Record, he responded: At least three locations offered to put up such buildings as would be necessary and make a gift of him if he would move. . . . But I cannot see duty that way. Plenty of people with wealth and brains will look after those places. If I leave here the people are ruined. I cannot go. I would I think, be happier over yonder in a log building, with these people who love me so well and to whom I have given my life, than in a brick building elsewhere.

Pray for us.22 Contributions and subscriptions came from alumni and citizens in the community. Women in Lillington hosted an oyster supper and the allfemale Athenian Society at the Academy held an “Easter Reception.” Buies Creek Academy alumni attending Wake Forest College contributed; and the Academy received a $100 donation from Harvey Holloman of Boston, the first boarding student at the Academy. The most generous contributor was Mr. M.C. Treat, a wealthy businessman from Pennsylvania who pledged $1,000 if J.A. Campbell raised the other $9,000. The cornerstone of the new Kivett Building was laid on May 23, 1901.23

Tennis was also popular. “The Tennis Club has developed some very fine players,” the Pine Burr staff wrote. “There is a great deal of enthusiasm taken in this department of athletics. We have some six or eight courts.” While there had been some challenges in getting the track team started, “the track is nearly completed and the boys are very enthusiastic over the work.”26 The literary societies had expanded to four and most were active on the campus until the 1950s: Washington, Athenian, Eutrophian, and Philogian. The Washington was for primary school girls and met weekly under the direction of one of the female teachers. The Athenian, a young women’s organization, conducted business meetings on Friday afternoons “for recitations, readings, essays,” and discussions. Young men participated in the Eutrophian and Philogian societies that met on Friday nights “for debate, declamation, reading essays and the transaction of business.”27

For three years the school operated in the large tabernacle, which had been converted into classroom space in mid-January 1901 until the main building was completed in November. By 1902, besides holding the twelveweek sessions, the academy hosted its first summer session. In November 1903, the new brick building had been erected at a cost of $30,000. The completion of the Kivett Building brought new life to the school. The 1909

Left: The Kivett Building was completed in 1905.

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constructing the basement that became the first campus dining hall. The erection of the dormitory on the campus decreased the number of students who boarded in private homes in the community. Students enrolled in the Academy who lived with families were required to submit monthly student behavior reports.30

J.A. Campbell and the faculty took pride in the work of the students who participated in the literary societies. They viewed the societies, “with the advantages of the library, to be one of the best means of securing independence of thought as well as correct thinking. The societies are the pride of the school, here the members learn to become better speakers and writers and acquire knowledge of parliamentary law that will be an untold benefit to them later in life.” By 1908, the library in Kivett had amassed more than one-thousand volumes and “through the kindness of our representative in Congress, we have received the appointment as a Depository of Public Documents.”28

Most boarding students who enrolled in the Academy came by rail to Lillington, Dunn, or Coats. Arrangements were then made for transportation to the Academy.

“Mr. J. T. Reardon, Buies Creek, N.C., will meet students if notified at any time at the following prices, reasonable amounts of baggage included in each case:

Buies Creek Academy also possessed a cheerful and spirited school song: Boosting B.C.A. Faithful and True hearted, let us cheer our dear old high; We revere her and defend her and her colors proudly fly; We will stand for her united, of her deeds we gladly tell, her colors streaming, glad faces beaming, So here’s a cheer for her that we all love so well Chorus Let every heart sing, let every voice ring, There’s no time to lose or play: It’s ever onward our course pursuing, May defeat ne’er our zeal dismay, But united we will boost for her, our B.C.A.

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From Dunn, one student buggy $1.00

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From Dunn, two or more students wagon $.50

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From Coats or Lillington one student buggy $.50

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From Coats or Lillington two or more students, wagon $.30

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Liverymen at Dunn will bring students on buggy, one for $1.50; two or more for $1.00 baggage included.”31

World War I and the “Great Influenza Outbreak” of 1918 had a significant impact on the Academy and the Buies Creek community. Some BCA alums who served in France included Carlyle Campbell, Paul Green, J.F. Blackmon, and Jasper Blackmon. According to Dr. Bruce Blackmon, class of 1940, the influenza outbreak also inflicted a serious toll on some families in the community. “If you saw a house and there was no smoke coming out of its chimney, that was an indication that the person responsible for heating the home was no longer alive.”32

Honors she has taken, she has sons in fame’s great hall, May she always rank the highest, may her colors never fall; There’s no there that can match her when we try her students’ steel; Her boys the fleetest, her girls the sweetest, Then here’s a cheer for her, for her who ne’er will yield.

(Buies Creek Academy Catalog, 1919-1920.29

Electric lights came to the campus in 1918. The first electrical plant was donated by the Rev. Fred N. Day of Winston Salem who gave $500 for Treat Dormitory. Friends also contributed funds that allowed the academy to have an Allis Chalmers Light Plant installed on the campus that furnished “lights for the dormitory, the Annex, the Academy and the Church.”33 A more steady electrical current arrived on the campus in 1924, when Central Carolina Power and Light Company installed a power line that connected Duke (now the town of Erwin) to Buies Creek.34

During 1911, plans were being made for the building of the first dormitory, named for M.C. Treat; and the Board of Trustees, appointed by the Little River Baptist Association, came into being. J.A. Campbell and his sons, Leslie and Carlyle, completed their B.A. degrees at Wake Forest College in 1911. By 1913, subtle changes began to emerge on the campus. The building of the Treat dormitory for girls involved community members

Right: The women’s tennis team (1914). Sports like tennis, basketball, and track were popular during the early 1900s.

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Besides the contributions made by M.C. Treat and Fred N. Day, J.A. Campbell secured a $60,000 donation from Mr. B. N. Duke in 1927 to establish modern water and sewage facilities on the campus. There were 620 students enrolled in the school in 1923, and the first dormitory for boys was completed that year. It later became known as Layton Dormitory.

According to J. Winston Pearce, “The evening of September 26, 1923, was a significant date for the life of the school.” That evening D. Rich spent the night in the home of Dr. and Mrs. Campbell, and that morning they asked how he had slept. He replied, “I slept very little,” He continued, “No, I did not sleep well. Jesus and I talked together most of the night, and Jesus told me ‘Buies Creek must live.’” Rich died the following year and left one eighth of his estate to the academy. He also provided $60,000 for the construction of Carrie Rich Memorial Library in honor of his first wife, as well as the first brick gymnasium and the D. Rich Memorial Building, completed in 1926.35 These new facilities, as well as competition from the new high schools that were being completed across the state in the 1920s, provided incentives for the Academy to become a junior college. At the annual Baptist State Convention Meeting in Wilmington in 1925, J.A. Campbell sold his interest in the Academy (appraised at $56,000) to the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina for $28,000; the school was then valued at more than $500,000. The Board of Education of the Baptist State Convention recommended unanimously that Buies Creek Academy become a junior college, beginning with the 1927-28 academic session.

At that meeting, the Reverend A. C. Hamby made the motion to change the name from Buies Creek Academy to Campbell College, in honor of its founder. Dean D. B. Bryan of Wake Forest College approved of the name change, and Wake Forest College bestowed on J.A. Campbell the honorary Doctor of Divinity degree in 1926.36 In the 1927 Pine Burr, the senior class recognized the important milestone reached by the college: Since the opening of Buies Creek Academy in January 1887, many changes have taken place. August 21, 1926, marks a new era in the life of our institution, with the opening of the Junior College. Since that date, the name has been changed to Campbell College, as a just tribute to our beloved president, its founder.

Left: The 1922 men’s basketball team, coached by Professor Leslie Campbell.

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In the fall of 1926, with eyes set upon a distant goal, the members of our class—the first college class of this institution—stepped in through the newly opened doors. It was indeed quite an honor bestowed upon us to have the privilege of being charter members of the college department of this growing institution. Yet along with the honor this privilege brought, there came a challenge to each member of the class to make a record that will be hard for those to follow in our footsteps to equal or surpass.37

D. Rich

Building a Campus Centerpiece

The first school newspaper, the Creek Pebbles, was published beginning in 1926 as a bi-weekly publication by the students. That same year the college fielded its first football team. An assessment of the football team’s first year noted that “the young Junior College approached a hard schedule . . . with very little experienced material.” Coach Leroy Martin and his assistants found plenty of raw material with a will to fight, but it took the major portion of the season to develop teamwork and a fundamental knowledge of the game. “While there were several disappointing games it was not without its bright lights. Victories over the Elon Reserves and Fort Bragg cheered the local supporters. But the victory over the strong Wingate Junior College team was regarded as the greatest achievement of the season.”38

D. Rich couldn’t sleep the night of September 26, 1923. The secretary-treasurer of the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, he was in Harnett County visiting J.A. Campbell, the president of Buies Creek Academy. Rich had gotten to know Campbell through their mutual friend Fred N. Day, an evangelist. At Day’s request, Rich had given the school more than $60,000 to build a library in honor of his first wife, Carrie. Now, on that September night, Rich couldn’t stop thinking about what more he could do to help the small school.

The next morning, Rich told Campbell he had a talk with Jesus, who had told him, “Buies Creek must live.” “If I put up a building and you teach boys and girls,” Rich asked President Campbell, “do you think God will let me share in the privilege of educating them?”

While the 1920s brought prosperity to the campus, the decade ended in economic despair for the nation with the collapse of the stock market in 1929. In 1920, the state had secured bonds for the building of the Carolina Central Railroad from Lillington to the coast via Buies Creek, Coats, and Benson; but with the Great Depression, the railroad never materialized.39 The Depression brought new challenges to Dr. Campbell and the faculty, as well as the students who attended. Campbell was a firm believer that no student should be denied the opportunity to attend his school because of being poor.

When Esther Johnson transferred from Flora McDonald College in Red Springs to Campbell in 1930, she recalled how Campbell met with her father at the D. Rich Building and allowed him to pay his daughter’s tuition and boarding fees with two truckloads of cord wood and two barrels of syrup.40

At chapel that same morning, Rich shared with the Academy’s students what he had told Campbell and added, “If I live to get home I shall change my will.”

When Rich died about a year later—on October 21, 1924—he had left an eighth of his estate to Buies Creek Academy. The school received about $160,000 in cash immediately. That enabled the construction of the D. Rich Memorial Building. Built in the center of campus, it was home to a 1,200-seat auditorium, twelve classrooms, two study halls, labs, and offices when it was completed in September 1926. Creek Pebbles, the then-student newspaper, reported: “No building in the state, said the speakers, combined such conveniences, service, and beauty at so small a cost.”

Dr. Campbell died at the age of seventy-two in 1934. At Campbell’s funeral, Dr. Charles E. Maddry of the Foreign Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention proclaimed, “Dr. Campbell was a great servant of God because he early had a divine experience of the saving power of Christ.” Dr. Maddry also said, “Because of [Campbell’s] great love for others, he literally wore himself out serving them, giving poor boys and girls the chance of an education . . . He always saw a future of service in his boys and girls.”41

Throughout his life and through his estate, Rich gave Buies Creek Academy more than $400,000 total, which helped pave the way for the school to be included in the Baptist State Convention, to become a junior college, and to be accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools.

Right: Buies Creek Academy became Campbell College in 1926.

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Mrs. Cornelia Pearson Campbell  An Equal Partner 

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ornelia Pearson was one of sixteen students on that first day of school in January 1887, anxious to continue her studies in Latin. But by the time the day was over, the eighteenyear-old daughter of William Pearson had become a teacher herself. The young preacher in charge of the school, James Campbell, found himself overwhelmed by young children to teach and asked “Miss Nelia” to take charge of them. In 1890, the prospectus announced that “Miss Cornelia Pearson, who has been successful as a teacher, will assist the school.” She and J.A. Campbell were married in November. In the following year, she was named assistant principal and business manager of the Academy.

Mrs. Campbell, working alongside her husband, was actively involved in ensuring the survival of Buies Creek Academy and Campbell College, despite wartime hardships, the Great Depression, and the challenges of a rural location. When income was tight at the school, she worked tirelessly to provide fruits and vegetables from the farm for meals in the dining room. In addition to raising her own children, she also opened her home to numerous boys who came to Buies Creek needing a place to stay.

After her husband’s death, Mrs. Campbell continued to help the college, donating acres of land to assist in the school’s expansion. The Campbells had three children: Leslie, who became president of Campbell; Carlyle, president of Meredith College; and Bessie, a professor of piano at Campbell. Cornelia was a charter member of Buies Creek First Baptist Church and died at the age of ninety-seven in 1963.

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Campbell College, 1930

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The L. H. Campbell Era  1934-1967 

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eslie Hartwell “L.H.” Campbell (1892-1970), the oldest son of the founder J.A. Campbell, was the unanimous choice by the Board of Trustees to succeed his father. Leslie was eight years old when the academy burned in December 1900. He remembered attending classes in the converted tabernacle when the Kivett Building was under construction. He graduated from Buies Creek Academy in 1908 and enrolled in Wake Forest College, along with his younger brother Carlyle. In three years, they both graduated with honors from Wake Forest, alongside their father. This proved a memorable occasion. Dr. William Louis Poteat, Wake Forest’s president, was said to have danced a jig from happiness when all three Campbells walked across the stage to receive their diplomas, exclaiming: “The Campbells are coming, the Campbells are coming.” Leslie and Carlyle both returned to Buies Creek. Carlyle taught Greek and Latin, while Leslie taught English and mathematics, and later served as a dean. For a short period, he also worked as a merchant in Buies Creek.

Affectionately known as “Professor Leslie,” L.H. was popular with the students; the Pine Burr staff dedicated the yearbook to him in 1930. The Creek Pebbles in 1932 noted that “there have been students this year who did not know his last name was Campbell.” He also enjoyed sports. He served as the catcher on the baseball team, and was an avid golfer throughout his life.

He earned an M.A. at Wake Forest in 1916 and pursued additional graduate study at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and at Columbia University. Sadly, L.H. experienced a family tragedy in 1920 when his wife, Viola Haire, died of tuberculosis. The couple had one son, Hartwell. L.H. later married Ora Green, and their union produced four children: Catherine McLean, Elizabeth Pearson, Ora Green, and James Archibald Campbell.1

Left: Leslie Campbell and Fred Pendly discuss the construction of the Science Building.

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Upon his father’s death in 1934, L.H. Campbell—at the age of forty-two— became the youngest college president in North Carolina. During his long, thirty-three-year tenure as president, he guided the college through many challenges and economic struggles, especially the Depression and World War II. At his 1935 inauguration as the second president of Campbell, he said, “The events of this hour constitute only a link between a past set with marvelous achievement and a future calling for our wholehearted endeavor.” He concluded his address stating, “This is no coronation day. Rather, it witnesses the solemn dedication and surrender of all it is in us to a holy cause.”2 Leslie’s major achievement was to expand the institution following World War II, steering Campbell to become a fully-accredited co-educational Baptist-affiliated liberal arts and vocational college. Like his father before him, he encouraged students to pursue higher education in spite of economic hardships. A former student, Inez C. Spence, recalled: I finished my two years at Campbell in the spring of 1931. Those who are old enough to remember now that money was very scarce at that time, and my parents had two children in college. They felt that one of us must wait a year while the other finished. My brother was a senior at the university at Chapel Hill. Professor Leslie came to our home, sat on the front porch, visited with my parents and insisted that they keep both children in college even if the money must be borrowed. The results? Both my brother and I continued our education. I shall never forget that visit and how it influenced my life.3 To ensure that students could afford to attend during those lean years, Campbell College used the barter system. One student in the 1930s paid his tuition with farm produce by giving the school “12 lbs. of flour, 5 lbs. of Irish potatoes, 4 lbs. of butter beans, 3 lbs. of string beans, 3 lbs. of shelled beans (butter beans), 14 1/2 lbs. of shelled string beans, 2 1/2 bushels of corn meal [and] 5 biddies weighing 8 lbs.”4 From 1934 to 1937 the Baptist State Convention proved unable to give any financial support to Campbell. According to L.H. Campbell, “We really hit rock bottom during the Depression.” Things got so bad that he had to call all nineteen of his teachers in for a special meeting, explaining, “It looks as if we shall not be able to make it.” After a moment of silence, a faculty member responded: “Well, Campbell may not make it, but let us die first.”5

Left: Leslie Campbell and Carlyle Campbell as children. Right: 1930 Eutrophian Literary Society. Despite trying financial circumstances, student life activities thrived on campus..

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It was all we could do to hold things together at the time. . . . We had to tell our teachers that if they would stay, we would have to pay them on the basis of their sharing their salaries in proportion to what we could collect. Enrollment dropped to less than three hundred, and most of the students were working their way through school.

– Leslie H. Campbell6 Despite these trying times, student activities thrived on campus. President Campbell requested that the students complete a survey regarding their “personal conceptions of the school ideals and their estimation of how well or poorly they were approximated.” According to the students’ survey responses, ideals of the school focused on “Christian principles, scholarship, clean athletes and coaches, and education for poor boys and girls.” In the area of constructive criticism, the students called for “more rigid enforcement of the regulations, more reverence and worship at chapel, less noise in the boy’s dormitory, more food for athletes, no ‘hogs,’ more heat, less frequent chapel, and more movies.”7 A list of the various student activities appeared in the 1933 Campbell College Catalog. These included the glee club, the literary societies, the music club, Creek Pebbles, the Student Council, 4-H Club, Boy Scouts, Einstein Science Club, and an International Relations Club. The various religious activities fell under the B.S.U. Council, a committee that included the faculty and the administration. Activities included Sunday school, the Baptist Training Union, daily chapel services, vespers, a volunteer band, and a ministerial conference. Participation in physical education activities for all boarding students became a requirement for graduation in 1926; athletics included football, basketball, baseball, tennis, and golf. There was also a monogram club.8 Campbell was certainly not a “reform school.” The rules were strict but the punishment was mild. Still, the religious undercurrent represented a major selling point for the college. According to the 1933 catalog, “The work of each day is begun with song and prayer, each student is required to attend the chapel exercises, and encouraged to enter into the spirit of worship with the Creator.” The school hoped that the students’ active participation in these programs might have a positive impact on their overall character development through “the wisdom of pure upright living and the folly and ruin of sin in its every form.” Sunday school attendance was mandatory.

Left: Students gather at the Paul Green Theater.

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Students who were Presbyterian and Methodist could attend the churches near campus, and evangelistic meetings were usually held on the campus once or twice each year.9

evenings but the young woman cannot be the same one the young man dated in the afternoon; no radios will be permitted in the boy’s dorm; radios may be played in the reception hall of the dorm and in Pearson from 3:30 to 4:45 p.m. each day.” Also, female students were not allowed to dress extravagantly or wear high heels in the classrooms; men were prohibited from smoking on campus, especially near the buildings; and women were forbidden to smoke on school property.13

The economic constraints brought on by the Depression did impact athletic activities. In 1934, President Campbell announced to the students in chapel that football had to be discontinued for the season. In the president’s formal statement to the students, alumni, and friends, he noted that this was a difficult decision to make: “Its maintenance on a creditable competitive basis is for us a too-expensive luxury in view of other vital claims on our income or advancement as an educational institution. . . . Certainly, as far as our experience goes, it is impossible to attract in sufficient numbers capable athletes willing to play for love of the game.” He concluded: “If at the end of another year, if it seems good to revert to football, we shall not hesitate to re-instate it.”10 Later that decade, football returned to campus, and President Campbell called for more school spirit. According to the Creek Pebbles, “On the day before Campbell’s first football game of the season in 1938, President Campbell asked, ‘What is Campbell’s greatest need?’ He answered: ‘One day I might think one thing, another, and another. We need many things, but the one I’m thinking of now is more and better school spirit.’”11

The only campus building constructed in the 1930s was the Dining Hall.

It was built in 1933 to accommodate four-hundred students, and was later named for the college’s longtime business manager, B.P. Marshbanks Sr. In 1937, one of three sections of Day Dormitory was completed to house thirty-three women. The Old Well near Kivett Hall was given a facelift by a stone mason from Raleigh; and Paul Green, a 1912 Buies Creek Academy alumnus, helped establish the Paul Green Theater, located between the D. Rich Administration Building and the Gym in 1934. That same year, a May Day celebration began to be held in the center of campus in the wooded area known today as the Academic Circle. Also, by 1937, Campbell was the only junior college in North Carolina to offer courses in drama and journalism for college credit.14

Campbell College celebrated its forty-eighth anniversary in 1935. Josephus Daniels, who had delivered the academy’s first commencement address, was again the graduation speaker. President Campbell introduced Mr. Daniels, then the U.S. Ambassador to Mexico, and presented him with a volume of personal messages celebrating the 75th anniversary of The News & Observer.

In his address, Daniels said:

The 1940s brought even more challenges to the college. President Campbell continued to raise funds and promote the school throughout the state. He was also speaking at many high school graduations and, on one occasion, even visited a former student who graduated from Campbell and continued her studies at East Carolina University. Rosa Pecora wrote a letter to President Campbell, telling him what his visit meant to her:

If you should ask me what the greatest revolution in North Carolina has been during the last half Century in North Carolina has been during the last half century and in what county, I should not hesitate to say it has been the building of this educational institution in Harnett County by Jim Arch Campbell. What he has done gives me faith in mankind.12

All the other transfers up here are so jealous of the Campbellites because our President has been to see us and are still interested in how we are getting along. They just simply did not have as good a President as we had. We appreciate it, too. Dr. McGinnis [East Carolina’s president] gave us 16 more qr. hrs. after you, Miss Martin, Dean Poplin, & Mr. Ayscue came. We were tickled to death, too, because that is a whole quarter’s work. . . . Your visit did us good in more ways than one.15

With a new era came new social rules adopted on campus. The March 1936 Creek Pebbles reported: “Sunday dates from 3 to 4:30 will be allowed; a male student may accompany a female student to church on Sunday

Right: Students participate in 1941 May Day celebrations (Courtesy of Dorothea Stewart-Gilbert).

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The Veterans Club, 1947

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In 1941, just one week following the invasion of Pearl Harbor, President Campbell received good news while attending the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools meeting in Louisville, Kentucky. He sent a telegram to Buies Creek to notify the faculty and students at Campbell that “We’re in. . . . Campbell College was the only school in North Carolina admitted to the association at the meeting.” The president especially thanked the students and faculty for reaching this milestone and noted that this achievement for the college “is not an end in itself but a means to an end. As the association’s standards are being raised, we shall have to keep growing to be worthy of that distinction.”16

reverently at the hour of worship in the simple rites of the local church adjoining the campus; or later in the afternoon being simply but delightfully entertained by our lovely college girls. I was touched by the appreciative expression of one fine soldier boy who wrote back, “I cannot express enough appreciation for the hospitality and friendship you afforded me in your home. It was with a feeling of unrestrained cheerfulness which accompanies the conclusion of a most happy day that we left your campus.”

Incidentally, let me say that in so far as I have learned every soldier acquitted himself with honor in every relationship, and or respect for the American army reached a new high . . . . Chapel talks and discussion groups are increasingly discussing national defense, civilian morale, first aid, nursing, preparation for essential industries, a Christian attitude toward war, post-war planning, etc. Traditional courses in mathematics, chemistry, social sciences, and physical education are now permeated with new living facts growing our fifth column activities, sabotage, bombings, and physical unfitness for military service.

World War II had a dual impact on the college, both positive and negative.

President Campbell addressed the effect with a message, “Campbell’s Challenge to Youth in this Emergency,” in a radio broadcast at WFNC in Fayetteville, North Carolina, on Thursday, February 12, 1942. Some excerpts from his speech: Hitler is making fanatics. We should make believers. ‘Let me die for Hitler,’ cries the German youth. Our slogan must be ‘Let me live for America.’

During the war, the enrollment on campus declined from seven-hundred students to around four hundred. Like many other colleges throughout the country, intercollegiate athletic programs such as football, baseball, basketball, track, and tennis were temporarily suspended during the war years. When many male students went off to fight, space for female boarding students was at a premium; and Layton Annex, which had housed males, was turned over to women.17 The war also affected food supplies on campus. A mother wrote President Campbell in January 1943 that she worried over her daughter’s welfare: “I don’t feel like she is getting the proper food, she has lost too much weight, and keeps getting thinner every time I see her.” In Campbell’s reply, he responded: “We are having more difficulty this year getting a variety of foods, especially meats, than usual. I have made inquiry on a number of occasions and have been told that there is usually enough to eat. Not all meals are uniformally [sic] good, but that would be the possibility even at home. I would not be willing, however, to accept anybody into our institution and deprive them of sufficient food.”18

Preparation for life, not in a static but dynamic, changing society, calls for constant experimentation and innovations. Our fool’s paradise of the decade following the First World War, together with its consequent depression is gone; in fact, since Pearl Harbor almost a new era with no problems and emphasis makes new demands upon American youth and youth-training institutions. . . . Our task is not primarily to preserve any educational systems or curriculum based upon tradition, however fine it may be. It is our obligation to create a pattern of education, partly old and partly new, to meet the needs of modern youth faced with new tasks and new responsibilities.

A casual visitor upon our campus last Sunday might have caught his breath to find the right side of the Administration Building of this peace-loving, Christian college flanked by a fleet of deserted army trucks. If that visitor be a lover of God and his fellow man, he would have been thrilled to find these hardy soldiers of Uncle Sam gathered from all parts of the country, participating

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Diamond J. Matthews, a member of the classes of 1943 and 1965 who served as an administrative assistant to three Campbell presidents, recalled her first visit to campus and her student days at Campbell during the 1940s:

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WWII

Struggle on the Homefront Like at most colleges, Campbell felt the impact of World War II in more ways than one. With most of its men sent overseas, enrollment was nearly cut in half by 1943. Athletic programs were suspended, and food supplies were at a minimum.

Campbell students from that era shared their memories of life in Buies Creek during the war: I remember the day the war was formally declared. President Leslie Campbell got the entire student body into one of the large rooms at D. Rich, and had a radio in there. He turned it on, and we heard, live, President Roosevelt declare war.

— Dorothea Stewart Gilbert (’46) The men who remained at Campbell during WWII were given training just in case they were drafted or faced invasion. There were obstacle courses to run, and men who came back after their military service said Campbell’s obstacle courses were as hard as any they had seen in the Army. I can remember swinging on ropes and scaling fences … and slipping and falling once, too.

— Diamond Matthews (’43) German prisoners of war worked in this area. I think they worked on the Campbell farm and helped lay the floor of Layton Hall when it was rebuilt after the fire. I think it was Dutch Matthews who would bring the German prisoners a Pepsi and a Honey Bun in the afternoon when it was hot.

— Robert King (’49)

Above: Jeff Stewart. After one semester at Campbell College, Jeff, like many other Campbell students, enlisted in the Army. He was injured and returned to Fayetteville to recover.

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On Saturday morning in August 1942, my father and mother brought my best girlfriend and me to Campbell to investigate the possibility of enrolling for the fall semester. The friendliness of the campus captivated all of us, and in September, Lois and I became very “green” freshmen.

With the end of the war, veterans were eager to return to their studies and the Buies Creek campus. Despite a shortage of dormitory space, classes resumed and the fall curriculum included refresher courses for these individuals. Dr. Campbell noted in a letter in December 1945: We are having a much larger enrollment for the year and conditions are very encouraging. I have come to realize, however, that every situation presents its peculiar problems. . . . Shortages of material and labor make this a serious undertaking. Besides we have had a pretty difficult time for the last few years keeping a faculty together that would measure up to our ideals. All and all, we have much to be thankful for.21

It was a good year and passed all too quickly. On an April morning, as I was diagramming a long sentence on the blackboard, there was a knock at the door of my English class.

Miss Mabel Powell, our teacher, responded and came back with the message that Dr. Campbell wished to talk with me. Quaking in my boots, I was escorted by Dr. Campbell to Society Hall where he invited me to become his secretary. I was amazed but quite flattered! I informed Dr. Campbell that while I appreciated the offer, I was not qualified for the job—I could neither type nor take shorthand. His response has lived in my heart and mind for all these years. He said, “You can do anything you want to do. Miss Powell tells me that you are her best student in English grammar. If you can handle grammar, you can learn to type, take shorthand, write and accomplish anything you attempt.”

Enrollment continued to expand. In a 1946 letter to an alumnus stationed in Guam, President Campbell wrote: “School people never get out of trouble. During the war we wondered whether we would have enough to keep the doors open through the period.” Concerning the present situation, he continued: “Now we are in danger of having those doors broken down by the mass of students trying to rush in. It is really distressing to have to turn down a great number every day.” In a letter to the former dean of women, Campbell described the overcrowded conditions: “These are pretty hectic days for us here. We are overcrowded in the dormitories and all the woods around us seem to have students in them.”22

So that frightened little freshmen, feeling so unworthy and incapable, began working in the President’s Office of Campbell Junior College on May 31, 1943. Three times that first summer, I resigned because I felt I was not doing a good job. Three times Dr. Campbell refused to accept my resignation, encouraged me to continue as I was doing, and assured me that everything would be all right.19

In an attempt to remedy this situation, Campbell made inquiries about the possibility of obtaining surplus war property from the federal government.

He addressed the regional administrator of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation regarding this matter:

Toward the end of the war, President Campbell was planning for the future. In 1944, he embarked on an ambitious campaign to raise $300,000 to expand the library, erect a physical plant building, and establish an infirmary. He also sought to repair buildings that had been neglected during the war and construct new dormitories for men and women. The campaign slogan was “A Bigger, Better Campbell College.” The co-chairs of the fundraising campaign were Dr. Campbell and Dr. Charles B. Howard, who chaired the Department of Religion. The Taylor Athletic Field was dedicated in 1943, and Britt Dormitory for men was dedicated in 1947.20

I shall be greatly obliged to you if you will acquaint us with the latest developments in the disposal of surplus war properties.

Campbell College is interested in obtaining information relative to the following types of supplies: •

Trucks, school buses and trailers for tractors

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Building materials

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Laboratory equipment, particularly pertaining to physics, radio, and electronics

Right: Cars in front of D. Rich (1940s).

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•

Office equipment

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Dormitory beds

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Tables and chairs

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Hospital equipment

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Plumbing supplies

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Laundry equipment and supplies

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Lockers

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Band and orchestral equipment

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Ediphones and addressing machines23

years, President Campbell was attentive to what Baptist leaders wanted to do with the vacated property in Wake Forest.26 Concerning the possibility of Campbell College leaving Harnett County, President Campbell wrote longtime friend E.V. Richards: “These past few months have kept me in a whirl. Many things are breaking here that have tremendous importance to the school.” With regard to Campbell College’s possible move to the $2-million facility vacated by Wake Forest College, he continued: “The whole idea is fraught with so many possibilities that it is almost too much for my little mind. I wish I could sit down with you and talk it over and get your reaction to the whole subject. For us it means an uprooting of a quite serious matter, but it would place us in the position to be of a tremendous service to Eastern North Carolina.”27

Surplus war supplies did come Dr. Campbell’s way. In a letter dated June 26, 1946, to Congressman J. Bayard Clark, he wrote:

In 1949, the Baptist State Convention moved to merge Campbell, Chowan, and Wingate and relocate the consolidated institution to Wake Forest. Locals were disheartened about the news. In an editorial written on December 1, 1949, the Harnett County News wrote:

I cannot recall whether I ever wrote to thank you for your part in the allocation of twenty trailers for veterans on our campus. . . . We have already perhaps accepted more veterans for the coming year than we can possibly take in. I am working on the idea of additional bus service to bring students in from nearby communities. I have also called the War Assets Corporation in Atlanta in behalf of further housing units, since we do have the space on our campus and also additional classroom facilities.24

When it comes to the actual moving of Campbell College out of Harnett, away, even, from the spot where Dr. James Archibald Campbell put it the News is dead set against it. . . . There are others, many in Harnett County who feel as we do about the matter. . . . No, Campbell should not be moved! It’s a monument, and it’s a dreary practice to move monuments.28

All Campbell College men’s and women’s athletic teams suspended during the war made successful comebacks. In 1948, the men’s basketball team won the N.C. Eastern Junior College Conference Tournament by defeating Presbyterian Junior College, Louisburg College, and Wingate College in the playoffs. Men’s football, coached by Reed Smith and Hargrove Davis, was the junior college champions and consecutively defeated Brevard, Presbyterian Junior College, Edwards Military Institute, Lees-McRae, Mars Hill, and Belmont Abbey.25

On April 11, 1950, President Campbell publicly announced that he would keep Campbell College in Buies Creek. Addressing a crowd of seventyfive supporters in the dining hall, he made encouraging remarks about the college’s future. According to one recollection, “He noted that the plan to move Campbell College to Wake Forest when Wake Forest moved to Winston-Salem had been dropped; Wake Forest was to become a seminary instead. All members of the group aroused themselves at the prospect of building Campbell College into ‘an institution of learning that may outstrip all of the good endeavors of the past.’ President Campbell then appointed a committee to study the needs of the school for its expansion.”29 Shortly after Dr. Campbell’s announcement in Buies Creek, at a specially called meeting in Charlotte on April 27, 1950, the Baptist State Convention rescinded its motion to create a bigger junior college by moving Campbell, Chowan, and Wingate to Wake Forest. Instead, it recommended that the

The aftermath of World War II brought continued growth to the college.

But the future became uncertain with the Baptist State Convention’s decision to accept the Z. Smith’s Reynolds Foundation offer to relocate Wake Forest College from its campus in Wake Forest, North Carolina, to a new campus on the Reynolds estate in Winston-Salem. Over the next four

Left: Football and other sports resumes play after the war (1950).

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vacated facility “be offered to the Southern Baptist Convention for the purpose of establishing a seminary.” The Southern Baptist Convention accepted the offer.30

The Campbell Board of Trustees met on May 14, 1959, and unanimously approved the Baptist motion that Campbell seek senior-college status.

The alumni also supported the decision, and Dr. Campbell began to seek the approval of all of the accrediting agencies, including the Colleges and Universities of the Southern Association and the Committee on Standards and Reports for Senior Colleges. All of the plans were approved, which led the college to “immediately [begin] to enlarge facilities to care for an enrollment of 1,250 students.”33

The editor of the Goldsboro News Argus viewed the relocation of Wake Forest College to Winston-Salem as creating a void for a four-year college in the eastern part of the state: Wake Forest College, which has served North Carolina from the Forest of Wake County since 1834, will move this summer to its new plant in Winston-Salem. Its removal will leave the great eastern half of the state without a four year, co-educational, liberal arts college. Meredith College is for girls only. Campbell College is co-educational, but it is a junior college. Removal of Wake Forest 150 miles farther west will reduce the number of eastern Carolinians, percentage-wise in its student body. It is natural and logical, then, that discussion is already being heard on Campbell College becoming a four-year college. Immediately it would appear that this would be a wise move and the best way to continue to serve those who have looked to Wake Forest but will no longer be able to look that way because the college is moving west. Campbell is an old stable, respected, and growing institution, it has an accepted reputation for high standards.31

Throughout the entire 1950s, President Campbell set out to make his institution bigger and better. Lights were added to Taylor Field in 1950; the same year witnessed the inauguration of a $150,000 fundraising campaign in the Harnett County area. In 1953, the new Carter Gym was constructed with a seating capacity of 950, and the old gym became the Mathematics Building.

The same year as the dedication of Carter Gym, President Campbell launched the “Go-Forward Movement” to raise $1.6 million over the next ten years.

Jones Hall for women opened in 1954 to house seventy-two women, with rooms arranged in suites with connecting baths.

On September 12, 1954, The News & Observer named President Campbell the Tar Heel of the Week: In 1934 Leslie Campbell became president and still holds that post. At that time the college enrollment was 312. Last year, it was 502, and was limited by the number of people the college can house on campus. Leslie Campbell became president of the institution at a time when the future looked darkest for it, during the depression. From 1934 to 1937, the state convention was unable to give the institution any financial support….The Baptist State Convention resumed its support to Campbell, and things began to look up and then World War II came along “when most of the boys were in the armed forces. The college had been coed all along and got through the war year with an almost all girl student body.” President Campbell considered 1941 to be a turning point for the College when it achieved full accreditation from the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools. Under his leadership “the college plant has at least doubled in size and college officials are at work now on plans for further expansion.”34

The official word to move Campbell to becoming a fully-accredited, four-year liberal arts college came when Dr. Douglas Branch, pastor of the First Baptist Church in Rocky Mount, made a motion at the State Baptist Convention that the Convention establish a four-year college in the eastern part of the state. A “committee of 25” studied this recommendation and, three years later, in May 1959, made the following statement to the Convention: That the trustees of Campbell College, in the light of the rapid expansion since 1950, the need for a co-educational Baptist college in the east, and the enthusiasm of its alumni concerning the future of the school, consider converting the institution into a senior college as soon as they think desirable and possible to do so.32

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Mabel Powell

A Great Teacher of Queenly Character In the fall of 1935, President L. H. Campbell pulled together all nineteen faculty members at Campbell College to give them an update on the school’s financial health. Things didn’t look good, and he asked for their advice: “Shall we close up our doors and say . . . we won’t open for the spring semester?”

There was a long silence before Mabel Powell, an English instructor, stood up and addressed her colleagues. “Dr. Campbell, I want to make a motion,” she said. “I move that we let Campbell College die. But that we nineteen die first.” Unanimously, the other faculty seconded the motion. The college lived on.

It wasn’t the first time that Powell had stood up to adversity. Born in the mid-1890s, Powell developed a serious spinal illness when she was five years old. A doctor told her family she probably wouldn’t live, and if she did, she would never walk again. For the next two decades, she wore heavy braces and slept on steel. But she defied the odds, and went on to earn degrees from Georgetown College and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. At age thirty-four, she started her search for a teaching position. Lots of schools turned her away, claiming she was “unfit for the rigors of classroom teaching.”

But Campbell President J.A. Campbell gave her a chance. She joined the school in 1924 to teach English and Latin at a salary of $100 per month. She stayed for forty-three years, retiring in 1967. During her career, every student at Campbell was required to read her grammar book. Of Powell, L.H. Campbell said, “Who can doubt that this great teacher of queenly character was divinely directed to Campbell College in our time?”

Above: Mabel Powell and her book Outline of Fundamentals of English.

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What manner of a man is he? A Christian gentleman, faithful in his witness. A loving father, zealous in his trust. A responsible guardian, tireless in his concern. A generous citizen, responsive to every need. A loyal friend ready to lend a hand. A willing servant, humble in the extreme. A human being, aware of his limitations.37

In 1955, Campbell College hosted Harnett County’s centennial celebration, and President Campbell chaired the committee. Following a week of various programs celebrating the occasion from throughout the county, a production of Paul Green’s The Highland Call was presented in the amphitheater on the evening of Saturday, October 15, 1955.

Various dignitaries from throughout the state attended the dinner and the performance, including Frank Porter Graham, president of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Green. Green wrote President Campbell a few days after the event:

By 1957, the enrollment on the main campus reached 1,023 students, and more residential facilities were added to the campus. That year, the college also renovated Marshbanks Dining Hall to accommodate an increased serving capacity of a thousand and upgraded the kitchen and storage facilities. Baldwin Dormitory was built in the same architectural style as Kitchin and housed 130 men when it opened in 1959. Campbelltown Apartments, consisting of twelve duplex apartments designed to house married students and faculty, was also completed that year. In 1960, Powell Dormitory, named for Professors Mabel and Nell Powell, was completed in four months—record time—to house sixty girls. The John S. Pearson Infirmary opened in 1960, with a lead gift given by Mrs. J.A. Campbell, wife of the founder, and named for her brother, who served as a business manager of The Biblical Recorder in Raleigh.

Let me say again that our whole County is greatly indebted to you forever for making a most attractive and memorable Centennial observance. Nothing but praise has come from any source concerning the drama. In fact, everybody that I have talked with is most enthusiastic concerning the Centennial program.35 A carillon system donated by the Reverend J. F. and Mrs. Blackmon was installed in the tower of Kivett Hall in 1955. It “tolled the hours, amplified daily vespers, and had provisions for sending out all over campus recitals from the campus organ.” Also, Kitchin Dormitory, named for a 1925 alumnus and benefactor J. F. Kitchin, was ready to house male students in the fall of 1955.36

In 1961, the James A. Campbell Administration Building was dedicated and Bryan Hall for women opened “as a cluster of twelve one-story apartment units grouped around an exterior wall” that could house two-hundred students. Strickland Hall opened in 1962 to accommodate 132 women, and E. P. Sauls Hall opened that same year to house 131 men. A major building completed on the campus was the 44,000-square-foot Leslie Campbell Hall of Science. This three-story structure originally housed the departments of physics, biology, and chemistry, as well as home economics. J. Clyde Turner Auditorium in D. Rich was renovated and had a seating capacity of elevenhundred. Carrie Rich Library was upgraded in 1965, and the additional stacks and reading room of the facility contained 28,000 square feet. Other additions and renovations included the Godwin Maintenance Building; and the first floor of the old Buies Creek pharmacy building was converted into a student union, known as The Oasis, in the 1960s and 1970s. According Campbell’s business manager, Lonnie Small, the cost of the project was between $80,000 to $100,000. Funding for the undertaking was financed by a special student fee of “$10 per student per year,” which was “authorized by a vote of the Student Government.” Hedgpeth Hall for women and Murray Hall for men also saw completion in 1967.38

The following year, in 1956, Dr. Campbell launched a committee to raise $100,000 for a 10,000-square-foot addition to Carrie Rich Memorial Library. That same year, the Pine Burr was dedicated to Dr. Campbell. The dedication read in part: Forty-five years mark the span of his official connection as teacher, dean and president. As architect in the realm of ideas and dreams, he has converted them into realities and they stand about us, monuments of brick and mortar and steel. A navigator on the pathway leading to eternity, he has helped chart the course of countless lives in the direction of high ideals and noble living. An earnest student who grows in wisdom and stature.

Left: The Academic Circle in 1964.

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Dr. A.R Burkot

A Standard-bearer of Excellence Dean of men. Registrar. Director of admissions. Academic dean. Provost. Vice-president of academic affairs. Those were among the titles and roles that Dr. A.R. Burkot held during his nearly fifty years of service at Campbell University, one of the longest tenures in the school’s history.

“A history of Dean Burkot’s duties and areas of service is impossible,” Campbell President Leslie H. Campbell wrote in the 1946 Pine Burr yearbook.

Burkot was born in Pennsylvania in 1909 to parents who were immigrants from Poland. The oldest of thirteen children, he was the first person in his hometown of nine-hundred to graduate from high school. He went on to attend Dickinson College and earn a graduate degree in modern languages from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Burkot, who could teach up to six foreign languages, joined Campbell in 1935. During his 49 years at Campbell, he “insisted on excellence” and helped the school evolve from a junior college to a senior college to a university. Campbell must “travel the high road of quality education and living,” he had said. “The price of mediocrity is death, if not immediate, still inevitable.”

He died in 1984. A residence hall on the University’s campus is named in his honor.

Above: Dean A.R. Burkot. Right: Female students participate in physical education exercises.

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The Well House A Campus Landmark

In the early 1930s, Campbell University alumnus Ira Blackmon travelled from Florida to Buies Creek to visit his brother, B.J., also an alumnus. When he arrived, Ira told his brother they needed to build a small house for the well that sat between Kivett Hall and what is now Wiggins Memorial Library. B.J. arranged for several men to haul in rocks from the nearby Cape Fear River, and Ira found a rock mason in Raleigh. The brothers then set into place almost every stone to build the well house. They completed it in the fall of 1935.

“I remember how proud they were when they [fitted] it exactly right,” said Dr. Bruce B. Blackmon, B.J.’s son and a former campus physician at Campbell University.

Campbell College achieved senior-college status in 1961. In a speech he delivered on Founder’s Day on March 6 of that year, President Campbell said:

In an October article, the school’s student newspaper, Creek Pebbles, described the well house as “a thing of beauty and a joy forever.”

On this observance of Founder’s Day we stand on a pinnacle from which we have seen in retrospect glimpses of the unfolding drama of this institution for the past seventy-four years–drama filled with intense human struggle, accompanied here and there with temporary reverses with groping, frequently toward some promised land of destiny, partially “hidden behind the ranges”; but thank God, with occasional vistas of inviting new tablelands of thrilling achievement just beyond. . . . The transformation of Campbell into a senior college is a far more meaningful and involved process than superimposing the junior and senior years upon the already established junior college. Just as the transition from old Buie’s Creek Academy to a junior college, begun in 1926, in many respects involved the rebirth of the institution, and so now becoming a senior college will result in many modifications in administrative policy and in the program of the institution.39

A few years later, the well house was scheduled to be demolished.

When Mabel Powell, a professor of English and Latin, heard the news, she walked immediately into the office of her colleague, Alma Kennedy.

“Alma,” Powell said, “you’ve got to go with me right not.”

Together they walked to President L.H. Campbell’s office and told him not to tear the well down. He stopped its demolition.

The well house was saved again when the campus community raised opposition at its planned destruction when Wiggins Hall, the original home of Campbell’s law school, opened in 1976. The well still stands, but was relocated in 2009 next to Powell dormitory.

Left: Students hold Campbell College flag. Campbell College earned senior college status in 1966. Above: Students sit inside the old Well House on Academic Circle.

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In 1961, Dr. Campbell launched a successful fundraising campaign to raise $2 million for the college’s expansion program. Dr. Campbell’s son, A. Hartwell Campbell, chaired this undertaking. When the academy burned in 1900, a student said to J.A. Campbell, “Don’t cry, Teacher, we are going to build you a brick school house.” In a similar gesture, Hartwell placed his arms on his father’s shoulders and said, “Don’t you worry, Daddy: we’re going to build you a four-year college and it will be a good one, too!”40

this goal. They both returned by train from Miami and arrived in Dunn at “2:30 in the morning, having been delayed for more than an hour, the sight that greeted their tired sleepy eyes went far to rejuvenate them. For there at the station, having waited in the cold for the delayed train, were 500 students, members of the faculty and friends of the community to welcome them.” Jimmie Jordan, the study body president, coordinated the rally and “speaking before the group, said that they had come to show their gratitude to the two men who had been chiefly responsible for bringing about this achievement in which all students would participate.”43

Responding to the campaign, a staff writer at The Durham Morning Herald wrote: “Buildings are going up faster than weeds at Campbell College.

One dormitory was completed in 90 days flat. The number of teachers, the proportion of Ph.D.’s and teachers’ salaries are going up rapidly.” Lieutenant Governor Lloyd Philpot declared June 18, 1961, as “Leslie Campbell Day,” and the WRAL television station produced a documentary aired throughout the country titled “Through the Stars Through Difficulties,” a phrase adopted from Campbell’s motto Ad Astra Per Aspera. 41

That milestone also marked a new era in leadership for Campbell College.

The previous year, President Campbell had announced his retirement, effective at the end of the 1966-67 fiscal year. The Creek Pebbles reported that President Campbell “hopes to surrender to his successor. . . a school free of short-term capital indebtness.” The newspaper further reported: “Dr. Donald Moore, vice-president of the Board of Trustees, said that it would be ‘a tremendous loss both to Campbell College and to the cause of Christian education, but a retirement richly deserved through over a halfcentury of devoted, outstanding and distinguished service.”44

The 1960s are remembered as a decade of student protests on many college and university campuses throughout the United States. Campbell College was not immune to the social unrest of that decade. One such protest occurred when a hundred students in October 1960 boycotted chapel services because they were against attending chapel five days a week.

“Meanwhile, about 500 students took their seats in the chapel, listened attentively to a student musical program, and then applauded college President Leslie H. Campbell as he announced continuation of college chapel programs.” The day after the protest, President Campbell wrote a letter to the student body, stating that during his twenty-five years as president “never have I refused to talk with any student about any matter of concern to him or her. I have always tried to prove worthy of your friendship.” He also let them know that the catalog they received before enrolling at Campbell notified them that “all students are required to attend Chapel exercises, Monday through Friday. . . . As long as I am president it is my intention to continue that policy.”42

Upon retirement, L.H. Campbell was named professor emeritus; and he and his wife moved to Raleigh where he could be near his brother Carlyle, who had served as president of Coker College in South Carolina and Meredith College in Raleigh. He also enjoyed weekend visits to Buies Creek and helped to found Memorial Baptist Church there in 1968. He died in Raleigh in 1970 at the age of seventy-seven.. When he retired from Campbell College, it was a fully-accredited four-year institution comprised of 2,200 students and 560 acres with facilities valued at $7 million and an operating budget of $2.7 million.45

President Campbell’s goal of making Campbell College a first-class, senior-college came to fruition in December 1966 when he and Dean Alexander Roman Burkot attended the Southern Association of Colleges and Universities accreditation meeting in Miami, Florida. Dean Burkot later said that they “went by the book” every step of the way to achieve

Right: President Leslie Campbell and longtime English professor Mabel Powell are honored upon their retirements in 1967.

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Mrs. Ora Green Campbell  A Gracious Christian Spirit 

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orn in Harnett County, Ora Green graduated from Buies Creek Academy in 1918 and attended the Asheville Normal School, the University of North Carolina, and North Carolina State College. She taught in the Harnett County Public Schools and at Buies Creek Academy. She was also a dedicated homemaker.

President Norman Wiggins said of Mrs. Campbell, “[She] was a delightful Christian, a warm and wonderful hostess, and an outstanding and gracious First Lady. In her life she personified the Christian spirit, and none could be in her presence without coming away better for having shared some time with her.”

The Campbells were the parents of five children: Hartwell Campbell, Catherine King, Ora Ellyson, Dr. James A. Campbell II, and Betsy Campbell Dail. Ora Green Campbell died in January 1991.

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Campbell College, 1967

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The Norman A. Wiggins Era  1967-2003 

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hen Dr. Norman Adrian Wiggins became the third president of Campbell College in 1967, it marked the beginning of his thirty-six years of outstanding service and leadership that propelled the college to become a fully accredited university with graduate and professional programs in law, education, business, pharmacy, and divinity. Dr. Wiggins came to Campbell with a solid academic background as a law professor at Wake Forest. His administrative capacities and Christian convictions made Campbell the outstanding Christian university that it is today. Dr. Wiggins’ vision of Campbell becoming a world-class university extended the institution’s reach not only to military bases such as Fort Bragg and Camp LeJeune, but also to the Research Triangle Park in Raleigh; Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; and Cardiff, Wales.

Norman Adrian “Ed” Wiggins (1924-2007) grew up in a Christian home in Burlington, North Carolina, and enrolled at Campbell College on an athletic scholarship in 1942. He later recalled his first visit to the college after graduating from Burlington High School: Having heard nothing from the school, I decided to visit the campus. Accompanied by Ervin Sykes, my classmate and boyhood friend of Burlington, our hometown, we journeyed to the campus on a hot August afternoon. School was out so activity in the “Creek” was not great. . . . Two wonderful women gave Ervin and me a much-needed and greatly appreciated sandwich. Late in the evening, President Campbell returned to campus and came over to the faculty annex…. To invite us to his house for a Sunday morning breakfast. Although we would not be properly dressed for the

Left: Dr. and Mrs. Wiggins speak with friends, 1967.

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President Campbell and I had a long talk. Yes, he had heard about me. Yes, my scholarship was secure. Yes, they would be looking for me in September. The time came for us to leave. We graciously and gratefully thanked Mrs. Campbell for the delicious breakfast.

As we were about to leave the porch, I turned to President Campbell and asked that I might see him for just a moment.

When alone, I said, “I believe that I should tell you that because of the illness of my father, I do not have any money except what I have earned working this summer in the Sykes Foundry and Machine Shop.” President Campbell stepped back and with that warm and friendly smile for which he was known, said, ‘I wouldn’t worry about that. Nobody has any money down here.

We will work it out some way.’

It was a memorable weekend. But it wasn’t easy convincing my mother and father that Ervin and I had Sunday morning breakfast, with the President of Campbell College and his wife.1 After his first semester, World War II interrupted Wiggins’ studies at Campbell. He served in the Marines in the Pacific during the war; and afterward, he returned to Campbell to complete his education. He also met Mildred “Millie” Harmon of Coats, and they married after graduating from Campbell in 1948. Dr. Wiggins later said marrying Millie proved one of the best decisions of his life. She served as his “helpmate, friend, confidante and partner” and was always “by his side with grace and dignity throughout the remarkable accomplishments at Campbell University.”2 Dr. Wiggins completed his bachelor’s degree at Wake Forest, graduating magna cum laude in 1950, and was admitted to the law school there, where he graduated cum laude in 1952. He excelled in trusts, and went on to work as a trust officer at Planter’s National Bank in Rocky Mount. Wiggins later served on the law faculty at Wake Forest. He also obtained his M.L.S. and J.S.D. degrees as a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar at Columbia University.

In 1964, he was named chief counsel of Wake Forest College. While there, Wiggins expressed a deep love for Campbell, which named him a Distinguished Alumnus in 1963.3

occasion, we accepted this invitation and dreamed of breakfast. It had been a long time since we had a good meal. President and Mrs. Campbell graciously greeted us upon our arrival for breakfast.

The meal was wonderful; and when it was over there were no leftovers to be put away!

In 1967, the Campbell College Board of Trustees unanimously elected Dr. Wiggins as the school’s third president. Upon assuming his duties in June, he immediately embarked on a new five-year master plan for the college.

Above: Norman Adrian Wiggins in the 1947 Campbell College Pine Burr yearbook. Right: Norman and Millie Wiggins at Wake Forest College.

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Through his recommendation, the Board of Trustees approved Robert H. Rooker of College Station, Texas, to construct the blueprints. Rooker recommended closing Judge Taylor Road, which ran through the center of the campus, and suggested removing the asphalt around the core of the central campus and replacing it with brick. The men’s dormitories were to be moved to the perimeter of the campus, and the center of the main campus would be reserved for academic pursuits. Other recommendations included “a new religion building, student center, fine arts center, and library expansion, extension of scientific facilities, a new physical education compound, and construction of an 18-hole championship golf course.”

Dr. Robert H. Stuhr of Gosner, Gerber, Tinker and Stuhr was employed as the college’s consultant to serve in “the area of executive staff advancement, public relations, fundraising, and related matters.”4 In 1968, the number of college trustees expanded from twenty-four to thirty-six. In 1969, the Presidential Board of Advisors also came into being.

Both boards promoted the work of the college from around the state as well as the nation. Also in 1969, Dr. Wiggins established the nation’s first undergraduate trust program and initiated the Southeastern Trust School, sponsored by the N.C. Banker’s Association. This school has continued every summer since 1969. The college also began using a computer for its internal operations, simultaneously offering courses in computer science and related fields.5 At his official inauguration in Turner Auditorium as the third president of Campbell College, Dr. Wiggins addressed the more than 150 representatives from colleges and universities in North Carolina and the nation in attendance. In his address, he said:

In mid-July 1968, a major fire broke out in the old Mathematics and Religion Building in the center of campus. The conflagration destroyed more than nine-thousand academic books as well as class notes and audio visual aids owned by the faculty. Campbell students enrolled in the second summer session helped the faculty and staff salvage materials from the fire-ravaged structure. Heartening to Dr. John Bunn, the chair of the Department of Religion, was the support received from his peers at “Duke, Southeastern Seminary, Wake Forest and other near-by-schools.”

These institutions offered their libraries to Campbell faculty and students.

In order to replace the destroyed facility, Dr. Tom Freeman of the First Baptist Church in Dunn assisted President Wiggins through a letter-writing campaign known as “Operation New Hope.” All Baptist pastors in North Carolina received a plea and responded by raising more than $1 million to complete the Taylor Hall of Religion in 1973.7

It is not without hesitation that I accept the honor of this office— with all its rights, privileges, and responsibilities—that you bestow upon me this morning. . . . While I am somewhat frightened by the responsibilities of this office, I accept them in the belief that this advantage point offers an even greater opportunity for Christian service.

I do so with the confidence that I will receive from all members of our academic community—both near and far—that counsel, guidance and support without which no president can succeed and with which there can be no limitations to our achievements.6

Left: Norman Wiggins speaks about Campbell’s Master Plan shortly after his inauguration in 1967. Right: A fire destroyed the Mathematics and Religion building in July 1968.

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With the Vietnam War ongoing in the 1960s, many college presidents were opposed to establishing Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) units on their campus. Dr. Wiggins, grateful for the opportunities Uncle Sam had provided him, secured in 1971 an Army ROTC unit, similar to the program on the campus at Wake Forest. This program has thrived over the past forty years, including winning the MacArthur Award for the best ROTC Unit in the region and claiming about two-thousand alumni commissioned as second lieutenants by 2012. Also, in the early 1970s, 150 full-time students were enrolled in the “Operation Bootstrap” program in which active duty soldiers could complete their college degrees in eighteen months through the G.I. Bill. The college was one of only six private colleges in the state to receive national certification for the education program from he National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE). Reflecting support of North Carolina’s longtime Third District Congressman, the Graham A. Barden Chair of Government was inaugurated in 1971. The Mabel Powell Chair of English and the Charles Barrett and Alma Dark Howard Chair of Religion were established in 1972. The Staley Christian Lecture Series also began that year. Campbell’s first radio station WCCE (call letters for “We are Campbell for Christian Education”) started broadcasting from the campus in 1974.8

The ROTC

A Stabilizing Factor In the early 1970s, during the controversy of the Vietnam War, many Reserve Officers’ Training Corps programs left college campuses across the United States. Not at Campbell University.

In fact, the university established its ROTC program in 1971.

First offered in the fall semester of 1971, the program offered basic courses such as orienteering and mountaineering to all students and an advanced program for those interested in becoming an officer in the U.S. Army, Army Reserve, or National Guard. Students who completed the advanced courses were commissioned as a second lieutenant when they graduated.

“The vast majority of the students that are in the program enjoy it,” said Lt. Colonel Richard A. Meyer, a U.S. Army Vietnam veteran who implemented the ROTC program at Campbell.

“They like a little bit of military discipline.”

In early 1973, the Student Government Association organized a protest when The Oasis raised its prices on canned drinks to 20 cents. “Rumors of a boycott spread like wildfire and their [Student Government Association] support was assured.” A makeshift tent went up in the quad at the entrance to The Oasis that was “filled with drinks, Nabs, honeybuns and tea canisters.” Business flourished. The tent was even frequented by faculty members and Dr. Wiggins. The administration urged students to go through existing channels to express their views. Students did, and the tent went down, along with The Oasis prices. Happy days returned to the campus until the following fall when prices and open hours were silently returned to those preceding the boycott.9

The addition of ROTC cadets had a positive effect on the campus, longtime campus physician Bruce B. Blackmon wrote in a 1976 memo. “ROTC students on campus have added quite a stabilizing factor to our student body. I do not remember ever seeing an ROTC student in uniform.”

Since its establishment in 1971, Campbell’s ROTC Battalion has won the prestigious MacArthur Award six times for the nation’s best unit. The program at Campbell continues today.

The 1970s brought more than physical changes to the campus. Dancing was no longer prohibited, and students could have their own telephones in the dorm rooms. In contrast to the five-day chapel requirement of the past, chapel met twice a week and was now called the Cultural Enrichment Program, or C.E.P. The decade also brought numerous pop bands and celebrities to campus, including Guess Who and the Peace Core, Goose

Right: A 1971 training exercise for Campbell ROTC cadets.

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Creek, Flash Cadillac, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, The Embers, Your Father’s Mustache, Billy Preston, Chicago, The Framptons, Linda Ronstadt, Lester Flatt and Mac Wiseman, and Mac Davis. U.S. Senator Sam Ervin, Charles Kuralt, and Frank Reynolds also spoke on the campus.10

In early 1973, in an executive session with officers of the Board of Trustees and the Presidential Board of Advisors, Dr. Wiggins “informed them that he believed the college would soon be able to enlarge its area of service.

The officers directed him to move forward immediately with a feasibility study to determine the advisability of the establishment of a law school.”

With the approval of the trustees, Dr. Wiggins secured Dr. Harold Wren, the dean of the University of Richmond’s T. C. Williams School of Law, to conduct the feasibility study, which found that North Carolina was last in the nation in lawyers per capita. A. Hartwell Campbell, the grandson of J.A. Campbell and a member of the N.C. General Assembly, also visited the campus in the fall of 1973 and indicated that the legislature favored the establishment of a fifth law school in North Carolina and one supported by the private church. Buoyed by this encouragement and Dr. Wren’s favorable recommendation, the Board of Trustees authorized a resolution in the fall of 1974 to create a law school at Campbell. The Council on Christian Higher Education of the Baptist State Convention met at the college in December 1974 when it addressed several issues regarding the need for a new law school in the state, the effect the law school might have on the college’s budget and library, and the overall quality of the law and graduate programs that were to be offered. At a special meeting in March 1975, the Board of Trustees unanimously recommended the establishment of the law school, as well as graduate programs in education and business. The final decision to establish these programs at Campbell came at the July 15, 1975, meeting of the General Board of the Baptist State Convention in Raleigh.

President Wiggins and Vice President A.R.Burkot were in attendance. “No matter what the outcome, it would be a historic day for North Carolina Baptists and Campbell College. Leaving it solely in God’s hand, no member of the General Board was contacted about making the motion to approve the Campbell recommendation. Yes, as soon as the matter was put up for action. . . ‘the vote was unanimous. The Campbell College School of Law and the graduate programs in business and education were on the way.” The law school also achieved the American Bar Association’s approval in 1978.12

According to the 1974 Pine Burr yearbook, the typical Campbell students included a student body that had “blacks, whites, yanks, grits, bootstarppers, dormos, ROTC, freaks, international students, coeds, commuters, and married students.” The editor further described the student body this way: Every Group which makes up Campbell could not be included herein and the satirization of student foibles is not intended to offend to see honest humor in the situation is our intent and to this aim the Campbell student is easily lent. Alas, we wish to present a picture of the Campbell student. As he is in the time of crisis—1973-1974.

The student of the ‘70s is unique. He faces the classic problems of academic life. But he also confronts the energy crisis, pollution, and other ills. The Campbell student is the “new student” of a new decade. In the event of day-to-day life one sees the essence of the student. Today’s student is many things. But above all the student of Campbell College is a human being and an integral part of this campus.11 The early 1970s led to discussions of creating a law school, but many in the legal and academic communities in North Carolina were unsupportive.

Because of a tenuous economy, most private colleges were significantly trimming their budgets, and several had even closed their doors. North Carolina also was already home to four law schools at Duke, N.C. Central, Wake Forest, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The state didn’t need a fifth law school, especially during a period of economic gloom, some argued. Despite this opposition, the Campbell law school became a reality in 1975. Three years before the initiative was approved by the Baptist State Convention, Dr. Wiggins “began to discuss the feasibility of a law school and graduate programs with members of the trustees.”

Debts were being retired; the library and other facilities were strengthened.

The mission of the establishment of the law school was to prepare lawyers in family law and to prepare its students to become “all-round lawyers.” In addressing the general Board of the Baptist State Convention following its unanimous approval of the law school, President Wiggins attested: “From the beginning Campbell has operated upon the Scriptural admonition of James 1:5, ‘If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask God.’ We believe that

Left: Dancing was first allowed on the campus in the 1970s.

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the love of God and the love of learning go hand in hand. Indeed this is why Baptists invest heavily in education.” President Wiggins affirmed that the Campbell School of Law would retain a Christian undercurrent. Plans were also made to renovate the Kivett Building for the law school. The charter class of ninety-seven students enrolled in the fall of 1976. During the past thirty-six years, Campbell law graduates have excelled on the North Carolina Bar Examination, frequently surpassing the law students from Duke University, Wake Forest University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and N.C. Central University. Also, a first in the state’s legal history occurred in 1994, when Campbell Law graduates achieved a 100 percent passage rate on the bar exam. The success of the law school was attributed to Dr. Wiggins’ pioneering leadership; and in 1988, the Board of Trustees gave it the appellative Norman Adrian Wiggins School of Law.

Perry.14 Also among the best baseball players to play for the Camels was Cal Koonce, a junior college All-American, who went on to play for the Chicago Cubs, New York Mets (where he was a member of the 1970 World Series Championship team), and Boston Red Sox.15 Following Campbell’s runner-up showing at the NAIA national men’s basketball tournament in Kansas City in 1977, Campbell made a bold move from the NAIA conference to membership in the NCAA Division I. The 1970 also witnessed the completion of Burkot, Small and McCall residence halls; the Nathan Johnson Aquatics Center, an indoor swimming pool; the Keith Hills Golf Course bordering on the Cape Fear River; Taylor Hall; and the renovation of Kivett Hall to house the law school. Britt Hall was also converted into the campus bookstore and the McKnight Building (a former drug store) became the Student Center.

Throughout his tenure as president, Wiggins continued to support the academic foundations of both undergraduate and graduate education.

He created the Presidential Scholars program in 1978. It was designed to attract high-achieving students to its student body. Almost a decade earlier in 1969, he helped launch the N.C. Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, an organization which helped secure the N.C. Legislative Tuition Grant, which has enabled more North Carolinians to attend private colleges and universities throughout the state.

On June 6, 1979, Campbell achieved university status following the graduation of the School of Law’s charter class, and the name appropriately changed from Campbell College to Campbell University. Moreover, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools recognized Campbell as being a fully-accredited Level Three university offering graduate and professional programs in business, education and law.16

Athletics have long been a vital part of the Campbell experience. Since 1956, Campbell has operated one of the largest summer basketball schools for boys and girls. Fred McCall and Horace “Bones” McKinney co-founded the camp. Other prominent basketball coaches to work the camp over the years included John Wooden of UCLA and Press Maravich, who coached at Clemson, N.C. State, and Lousiana State. Pete Maravich attended the Campbell basketball school every year with his father from age nine to seventeen. He then returned as a camp counselor and instructor during his collegiate days at LSU, where he set an NCAA scoring record of 44.2 points per game for his career, and later throughout his professional career.13

The 1980s brought continued growth to the University. The LundyFetterman School of Business was created in 1984; and in 1985, the Department of Education became the School of Education. The Taylor Bott Rogers Fine Arts Building was constructed and a fire destroyed the old laundry building. A new laundry facility was erected in 1985. Treat Hall, one of the original dormitories built in 1913, was found to be structurally unsound and the building was demolished and replaced with the Rumley Center. The Nisbet Tennis Center was completed in the mid-1980s.

In 1985, Campbell University announced the establishment of a new School of Pharmacy, and had the distinction of being the first Pharmacy School created in the United States in thirty-five years and just the second pharmacy school in the state. It was the first to offer the Doctor of Pharmacy degree.

Baseball greats James and Gaylord Perry, two brothers from Martin County, are Campbell alumi from 1959 and 1960. Both were major league pitchers and recipients of the prestigious Cy Young Award. It has been said that Campbell’s mascot is named “Gaylord the Camel” after Gaylord

Right: Student in front of the Campbell University School of Law sign.

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The decision to establish the School of Pharmacy at Campbell was announced by Dr. Wiggins on January 28, 1985, at the meeting of the Council of Christian Higher Education of the N.C. Baptist State Convention in Raleigh. In that year, only two Baptist colleges, Mercer and Samford, possessed pharmacy schools, and surveys indicated that there was a shortage of pharmacists in North Carolina. Following an extended nationwide search, then Provost Dr. Jerry Wallace named Dr. Ronald Maddox as dean. Maddox was the assistant dean and professor of pharmacy at the Southern School of Pharmacy at Mercer University in Atlanta. The school admitted its first students in the fall of 1986.17 A quarter of a century later, for the entering class of 2016, there were 2,442 applicants for 108 spaces.18

School of Pharmacy will be a leader in pharmacy education. Its graduates will be involved in community pharmacy practice, drug information, and industrial pharmacy. The Campbell University Drug Information Center … will be a regional drug information center and will supply drug information for physicians, pharmacists, nurses and other health professionals.

Campbell pharmacists will be recognized nationally in the pharmaceutical industry for their impact on changing pharmacy systems. New delivery systems will be developed with regards to adequate absorption of medications by Campbell University Pharmacy School graduates. Many lives will be altered with regards to prognosis due to evolutions and inventions of Campbell University School of Pharmacy graduates.

In 1993, Dr. Wiggins later recalled the visit he and Dr. Wallace made to the Accreditation Committee of the American Pharmaceutical Association in Charleston, South Carolina:

Campbell pharmacists will be recognized as distinguished educators due to their real-world approach in terms of education and their communication skills in dealing with students. New curricular designs will be implemented and designed by Campbell University School of Pharmacy graduates.

In the long and demanding process of seeking accreditation for our School of Pharmacy, Dr. Wallace and I journeyed to Charleston, South Carolina, to meet with the Accreditation Committee of the American Pharmaceutical Association. We knew that if finally approved, Campbell would be the first university in the United States in more than thirty-five years to have established an accredited pharmacy school and one of the very few to establish a school offering the Doctor of Pharmacy degree. Before leaving our hotel room, we knelt and prayed diligently that we would be successful in our efforts. We also prayed sincerely that if it were not His will that Campbell should have a school of pharmacy, that He would close the door.

Fortunately, we received a favorable vote and today we have an outstanding school of pharmacy that is making its mark across the Nation.19

Over the past 100 years, Campbell University has had a tremendous impact on the people of North Carolina in the areas of Religion, Business, Liberal Arts, Education and Law. In the next century, Campbell will also be recognized for the effect it has on health care of the people of North Carolina through its School of Pharmacy.20 In the fall of 1986, Dr. Wiggins inaugurated Campbell’s centennial year celebration by visiting President Ronald Reagan in the Oval Office; while there, Dr. and Mrs. Wiggins presented a copy of Campbell College: Big Miracle at Little Buies Creek to the president.

In 1987, Dr. Maddox predicted that the Campbell University Pharmacy graduates would become leaders not only in this state but throughout the nation:

On the one-hundredth anniversary of Campbell’s founding in 1987, Dr. Wiggins reflected on the importance of Campbell maintaining its Christian values:

In the next century, Campbell University will be recognized for its effect on the health care systems of North Carolina. The

Left: Good Morning America filmed from the Campbell campus in 1980.

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It seems clear now that in spite of a century of unprecedented scientific discovery and application, man is now propelling himself toward ever decreasing options in the solution of problems that now confront us. At no point in human history since the birth of Christ has there been such an opportunity for the church, through its schools colleges and universities, to help the world know something about the Christian alternative of faith, hope and love.

Introducing Professional Education

In preparation for our entrance into our second century of service, Campbell has recently redefined her purpose by re-examining our basic theological and Biblical presuppositions. Although our purpose is much more beautiful and meaningfully stated, we can see our role as a university of the liberal arts, sciences and the professions as becoming increasingly vital in three areas: (1) by helping students develop an integrated Christian personality; (2) by encouraging in students creativity, imagination and rigor in the use of intellectual skills; and (3) in transferring from one generation to the next that vast body of knowledge and values that have accumulated over the ages and upon which the Nation was built.21

One of Dr. Norman Adrian Wiggins’ greatest achievements was facilitating the introduction of graduate and professional degrees to Campbell. Until 1977, the institution had provided outstanding preparation for undergraduate degrees.

Students then went on to other institutions to complete their educational careers. Dr. Wiggins saw great promise in making Campbell a terminal-degree institution.

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The Trust Education Foundation (1971)

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Juris Doctor – Law (1976)

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Master of Education (1977)

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Evening Master of Business Administration (1978)

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Master of Science in Government (1982)

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Doctor of Pharmacy (1985)

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Master of Divinity (1996)

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Doctor of Ministry (2003)

Campbell athletics also excelled in the 1980s. The baseball team won the Big South Conference in 1988 and 1990. Campbell’s overall record was 32-16 and the “Camels dominated in-state teams with a record of 16-4.”

The 1988 team “tied a school record for the most victories in a season. The Camels swept three games on route to the tournament title, beating Baptist (Baptist College of Charleston) in the championship game 17 to 0. The Camels had a strong surge late in the season and performed well against NCAA teams. Campbell also won seven games in which they were in their final at-bat, including a 3-2 win over the Deacons of Wake Forest.22 A few years later in 1992, the Campbell men’s basketball team made it to the “Big Dance” by clinching the Big South tournament title.

Doctor Wiggins also helped to instrument a long-standing degree program in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, at Tunku Abdul Rahman College in 1979. Fifteen students received degrees from Campbell in 1981. Since that time, more than twelvethousand students have received Bachelor of Science degrees from Campbell University.

The early 1990s witnessed the construction of two new academic buildings—the Riddle Pharmacy Building and Wiggins Hall (an addition to the Law School)—as well as residential facilities on the campus. In1996 the Faculty Commons, a residential complex, was also completed and Marshbanks Dining Hall underwent another major renovation.

Right: Dr. and Mrs. Wiggins visited the White House and delivered a copy of the Campbell College book to President Reagan.

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reagan photo

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sports photo

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According to the 1995 Pine Burr, student life at Campbell proved vibrant: Student life included, of course, listening to lectures, studying and counseling with professors, but those four years offered much more. Top the list of “more to student life than studying,” with an almost limitless opportunity to meet people from around the world. Some students built friendships that lasted a lifetime.

Student life included enrichment experiences that exposed scholars-to-be to a wide variety of speakers, performers and alumni who returned and helped bridge the transition from this scholastic “laboratory” to life in the pulsating, dynamic world of challenges and responsibilities… Student life included quick breakfasts at Marshbanks and sleeping until the last few minutes before a morning class was scheduled to begin. Between classes, students “hung out,” with friends, made plans for the evenings and checked the post office for letter and packages from family and friends. Yeah, student life included a lot more than going to class, to study or to counsel with professors.24

Big South Conference titles (1984-1994)

Campbell University’s sixth school, the Divinity School, became a reality in 1995, and admitted its charter class of eighty-four students. By August 2009, the total enrollment reached 237. About twenty-five percent of the students were drawn from non-Baptist denominations. The founding dean was Dr. Michael Cogdill, a professor of religion, and Dr. Bruce Powers became associate dean. The school was founded on the vision of providing theological education that is “Christ-centered, Bible-based, and Ministryfocused.” The curriculum was both formally and informally structured to allow the vision to come alive in the heart and mind of each student.

The degree programs placed emphasis on “the individual’s spiritual life becoming increasingly Christ-centered.” Courses were designed to enable the students to understand the Scriptures. The broad variety of courses available to divinity students enables them to “become Bible-based in personal spiritual development as well as preparing students to preach, teach, and share the message of the Bible.”25

Left: The 1992 Fighting Camels made it to the NCAA tournament to play against Duke.

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Baseball: tournament champion 1988 and 1990, runnerup 1985.

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Men’s Basketball: tournament champion 1992; runner-up 1987, 1989, and 1994.

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Women’s basketball: tournament champion 1992; runner-up 1987, 1899; regular season champion 1988 (tie). 1991.

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Men’s Cross Country: runner-up 1984, 1985, 1987, 1991, and 1993.

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Men’s Golf: Champion 1989, 1992, 1985, 1987, 1991, and 1993.

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Men’s Golf Champion 1989, 1992, 1993, 1994, runnerup 1987, 1991.

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Women’s Golf Champion 1993, 1994, runner-up 1992.

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Men’s Soccer Champion 1984, 1985, 1991,1992; runnerup 1986, 1989, 1993.

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Women’s Soccer: Champion 1993.

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Softball: tournament champion 1993, regular season champion 1994.

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Men’s Tennis: tournament champion 1989, 1990, 1991, 1992; regular season champion 1989, 1992, 1993.

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Women’s Tennis: tournament champion 1992, 1993; regular season champion 1993; runner-up 1992-1994.

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Volleyball: runner-up 1989.23

Diamond Matthews A Campus Landmark

Serving more than sixty years as administrative assistant to three of four presidents, Diamond Matthews was on the front lines as Campbell College became Campbell University. Matthews was just eighteen years old in 1943 when President L.H. Campbell asked her to be his administrative assistant. Matthews was studying to earn her Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration. “You can imagine how I felt when Dr. Campbell called me out of class,” Matthews said. “I couldn’t figure out what I had done.”

Matthews recalled the night in 1965 when Dr. Campbell and his wife returned from Atlanta, Georgia, with accreditation papers practically in hand. “For several weeks we’d worked 24/7 compiling a self-study,” Matthews said. “That was a landmark in our history. It was a most important time because we could begin our professional schools; we could take off then.”

The twenty-first century witnessed the completion of Campbell’s eight-year campaign that raised $111.6 million. “The original goal was $100-million.

The money will be used to build the business school, and support campus renovations, scholarships and endowments.”26 New facilities and renovations on the campus included the Lundy-Fetterman School of Business and the Pharmaceutical Sciences Building, as well as a campaign to raise $4 million for the renovation of D. Rich Building. The River Course at Keith Hills was also completed in 2000. The Folwell Fountain was named for the Dean Thomas Folwell, a beloved professor of business who taught at Campbell for thirty-seven years (1963-2000).27

And take off they did under Dr. Norman Wiggins. For the next thirty-six years, she was by his side during a remarkable period of growth, including Campbell’s accreditation as a university in 1979 and the establishment of five professional schools—law, pharmacy, divinity, business, and education. “Dr. Wiggins had the vision, and I helped make it a reality,” Matthews said.

Upon her retirement in 2006, she recalled: “I’ve been allowed to see it grow, prosper, and mature, and I have been truly blessed in working with three outstanding presidents—Dr. Campbell, Dr. Wiggins, and Dr. Wallace, each one a great leader for his era.”

After providing noble and outstanding service to his alma mater, Dr. Wiggins retired as president in 2003. At the time, Dr. Dwaine Greene, vice president for academic affairs and provost, summed up Dr. Wiggins’s legacy to the University:

Above: 74 Diamond Matthews served as administrative assistant to three Campbell presidents: Leslie H. Campbell, Norman Adrian Wiggins and Jerry M. Wallace. Right: Chancellor Norman Wiggins

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While the breadth of Dr. Wiggins’ achievements is stunning, his noblest accomplishment has been his absolute and unswerving devotion to the Christian purpose of Campbell University. With his singular focus on the combination of academic excellence and faith commitment, he has propelled Campbell to a leading position among Christian institutions of higher education.28 Dr. Wiggins served as chancellor of Campbell from 2003 until his death on August 1, 2007. Many of the state’s top political, business, religious, and educational leaders attended his memorial service held in Turner Auditorium. Dr. Wiggins’ life touched many people throughout the state, the nation, and the world. Congressman Bob Etheridge, a member of the class of 1965, noted: “If you look around at the people who are here, you will notice that in life and death Dr. Wiggins inspired people.”29 Dr. Wiggins’ outstanding forty years of service to Campbell included a legacy of total dedication and devotion to higher Christian education in North Carolina. In May 2007, Dr. Wiggins delivered his final commencement address, revealing his love for Campbell University. He said in part: There is a kind of spirit that captures people who come to this school. There has never been a place more sensitive to others than right here. God is expecting you to do something great for him.

You have an obligation today and you know it.30 During his forty-year tenure as president and chancellor, he received numerous honors and awards, including being among those cited in Tar Heels Who Made a Difference, 1900-2000. He was one of the “state’s true leaders of his time in higher education, especially among religious colleges and universities.” The Biblical Recorder recognized Dr. Wiggins as being one of the “Most Influential Baptist Leaders of the Twentieth Century.” Under his leadership, Campbell’s endowment grew from less than one million to nearly $100 million, and total University assets were valued at $140 million. Enrollment on main campus was 3,482; total enrollment in the system was 9,220.11

Left: Then-chancellor Wiggins delivered the 2007 Commencement address. Right: Hundreds of state leaders and friends of the University turned out to pay respects to Dr. Wiggins at his funeral in 2007.

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Mrs. Mildred “Millie” Harmon Wiggins  Serving With Elegance And Grace 

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or thirty-six years, Millie Wiggins defined the role of First Lady of Campbell with elegance and grace. She worked quietly behind the scenes, supporting her husband, Norman Adrian Wiggins and the Campbell Mission.

A native of Coats, Millie Wiggins graduated from Campbell College in 1948 and earned a bachelor’s degree from Wake Forest College and a master’s degree from Columbia University. Mrs. Wiggins worked as a teacher in the Rocky Mount and Winston-Salem schools systems before becoming First Lady at Campbell University in 1967.

Mrs. Wiggins was by her husband’s side when Campbell attained university status and supported him through the development of five professional schools and the often-intimidating accreditation process on numerous occasions. She remains a faithful friend to the University.

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Campbell University, 2002

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The Jerry M. Wallace Era  2003 to the Present 

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r. Jerry McLain Wallace was elected by the Board of Trustees as the fourth president of Campbell University on May 29, 2003. Since that time, Dr. Wallace has expanded on the growth trajectory that began under Dr. Wiggins in 1976.

Wallace initiated a new master plan that has made Campbell’s campus more aesthetically pleasing; he re-inaugurated Campbell football following a more than fifty-year hiatus; and he grew undergraduate enrollment to threethousand students. Dr. Wallace has also initiated new academic programs on the undergraduate and graduate levels. In 2009, he played an integral role in moving the law school to Raleigh. The vacated Buies Creek facility was renovated, and the Carrie Rich Memorial Library, renamed Wiggins Memorial Library, was relocated. The pinnacle of Dr. Wallace’s tenure has been the establishment of an accredited osteopathic medical school, which will offer the Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine (D.O.) degree. When it opens in the fall of 2013, it will be the second-largest medical school in North Carolina.1 Dr. Wallace first became acquainted with Campbell in 1970, when Dr. Wiggins invited him to join the faculty as an adjunct sociology professor.

Dr. Wallace was initially torn about leaving the ministry to embark on a career in academics. He began his ministry career as a pastor in Morven, North Carolina, and served for fifteen years at Elizabethtown Baptist Church. He chose to work at Campbell because of a sense of calling from God to be part of a “distinctive Christian institution.” He began teaching full time in 1975, when he became the chair of the Department of Religion and Sociology, and was named the Tyner Professor of Religion and Sociology. From 1981 to 1984 he served as the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and the director of Graduate Studies. Dr. Wallace was the

Left: Harold Wells, President Wallace and Billy Woodard at the groundbreaking for the Robert and Anna Gardner Butler Chapel in March 2008.

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do it better.” Jerry graduated from Rockingham High School and enrolled at East Carolina University on a football scholarship; after a brief stint as a college athlete, he decided to concentrate exclusively on his studies.

He found a creative way to take care of his own finances while in school.

“Wallace put himself through college at ECU doing taxes, which he taught himself to do using a reference book he bought at a railroad station where he frequently went to watch trains. . . . Only seventeen when he began preparing tax returns,” Wallace charged $3 for a federal return and $2 to complete a state return. He got most of his clients as they were leaving the third shift at the Rockingham mill. Upon his graduation from East Carolina, Dr. Wallace was accepted to Wake Forest Law School; but his true calling was the Christian ministry, and he enrolled at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. While a student there, he married Betty Blanchard of Wallace, North Carolina; they had begun dating when both were students at East Carolina. Dr. Wallace said his wife “has always complemented me with her natural enthusiasm. . . . She has been my best friend since I first met her. . . . Going home at the end of the day and enjoying her company is a delight to my heart.” They are the parents of Betty Lynne Wallace Johnson, Jerry McLain Wallace, Jr., and Lydia Kelly McLamb; and they have five grandchildren.3

university’s provost from 1984 and 1985, and was then named the vicepresident for academic affairs and provost. In addition to his administrative position, Dr. Wallace also taught “Religion and Society,” a graduate course for education and divinity students. When Dr. Wiggins took a leave of absence in June 2001, Dr. Wallace relinquished his former duties and served as an assistant to the president until January 2002.2

Dr. Wallace earned his B.A. in English and government from East Carolina in 1956. He obtained a Bachelor of Divinity in 1959 and a Master of Theology in 1961 from Southeastern Seminary and a Master of Science in Sociology and a Doctor of Education from North Carolina State University in 1971. His inauguration as the fourth president of Campbell University was held at the Lundy-Fetterman School of Business on April 2, 2004.

There were numerous dignitaries in attendance, including representatives of colleges and universities, such as Dr. James Royston, executive director of the N.C. Baptist State Convention; N.C. Secretary of State Elaine Marshall; U.S. Senator Jesse Helms; Yoong Lai Thye, principal of Tanku Abdul Rahman College in Malaysia; the Campbell Board of Trustees; and Chancellor Norman Wiggins and his wife, Millie.

Dr. Wallace grew up in a middle-class Christian family in Rockingham, North Carolina, with two older brothers, Bill and Mitchell. His father was a mill-store operator who suffered a stroke when Jerry was eleven.

His mother became the bread winner of the family, and she often told her children, “You can do anything that anyone else can do, and you ought to

In Dr. Wallace’s introductory remarks, he expressed appreciation to Dr. and Mrs. Wiggins saying, “Thank you for inviting me to come to Campbell thirty-four years ago, and for having confidence enough to allow me to share the great mission and calling of Campbell University. Truly you have been my brother and sister, my mentors, my dear friends, and so I thank you from the

Left: Jerry and Betty Wallace meet with students from Elizabethtown in 1971. Right: Betty and Jerry Wallace at his inauguration in 2004.

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depths of my heart.” In his address, Dr. Wallace acknowledged the previous contributions of the administrations of Presidents J.A. Campbell, L.H. Campbell, and Wiggins, and described some of the future goals he wanted to accomplish during his own tenure:

becoming an even more inviting and attractive campus will guide the improvement, re-arrangement, and addition of facilities, resulting in a more defined, useful, safe, and enjoyable campus environment for the university community.

Campbell will recruit faculty who unreservedly support the mission of the university, who are competent in their respective fields of study, who are committed to the primacy of teaching, and who perform research that will inform teaching and extend knowledge. We recognize that maintaining such an excellent faculty will require more substantial support, more competitive salaries, and more appropriate recognition. With full acknowledgement of the centrality of faculty to the learning enterprise, we commit ourselves to those aims.

Campbell will continue its mission to students in centers of learning located on military bases, at the Research Triangle Park, and other locations across our state to enable working and older adults the option of undergraduate and professional education.

Campbell recognizes the reality of a global society and will enhance and extend opportunities for students and faculty to participate in productive and meaningful programs.

Campbell will challenge its alumni to a greater involvement with their alma mater, by encouraging enthusiastic participation in programs which will improve the university and engender a more devoted pride in the Orange and Black as one of the outstanding Christian Universities in our nation.

Campbell will recruit and enroll students who will embrace the university’s purpose and whose abilities and commitments will make possible their success in their chosen vocations and professions as productive citizens. Campbell’s location in the heart of North Carolina and the Atlantic seaboard, along with the predicted increase of high school seniors in North Carolina and neighboring states, and our increasing attractiveness to international students, offers the prospect of achieving significant increases in enrollment in undergraduate, graduate, and professional programs. It will be our aim to work progressively toward that end.

Finally, Campbell will increase efforts to enlist new friends from a broader constituency by developing a visionary marketing and advancement plan that inspires and encourages support of a growing and strengthening university.4 In less than a decade, Dr. Wallace achieved many, if not all of, the goals that he put forth in his inaugural address. One of the keystones of Dr. Wallace’s address included the new master plan for the University. He presented the design at the August 2005 faculty orientation, held in Turner Auditorium in the newly renovated D. Rich Building. In his message, he said: “The twenty-first century has brought great opportunities and challenges for Campbell University, including the need for major physical changes to campus.” He continued: “We must respond with a bold program of expansion and renewal, which will ensure Campbell’s continuing success in attracting the very best students and faculty.” He indicated that the plan would enhance the university’s future growth. “At the heart of this vision is the development and enhancement of an academic community which is traditional, beautiful, and functional. The realization of the Master Plan is

Campbell will respond to the existing and developing needs of the region, state, and nation by providing new undergraduate, graduate, and professional programs that complement and extend Campbell’s mission. Delivery systems for these new and existing programs will be a blend of time-tested pedagogical methods, along with the developing technologies which are impacting all areas of our society.

Campbell will improve the quality of residential life on the campus by providing new and improved academic, residential, student life, and athletic programs and facilities. This aim of

Left: Biology Professor Timothy Metz and a student review a specimen.

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already under way.” He concluded by saying, “Surely these are the days the Lord hath made, for Campbell to move forward with vision, courage and resolve. The time is now!”

serving stations, a new Presidential Dining Room, and the Alumni Room.6 In January 2006, the study abroad program became a reality. Dr. Donna Waldron, an English professor, became the director of the program.

According to Waldron, “It is an individually-focused program allowing students to go where they have dreamed of going and to do what they have dreamed of doing.” The study abroad program has provided opportunities for students to study in Costa Rica, Italy, Great Britain, Wales, France, Australia, Africa, and Hawaii. Waldron attested: “I want to counsel and coach their dreams. My goal is to offer something to everyone in each department of the College of Arts and Sciences, and the prices of these programs are comparable to a semester at Campbell.”7

The goals of the master plan proved ambitious and represented a complete facelift of the campus. The proposal was approved by Campbell’s Board of Trustees in September 2004. Over the next year, an architectural firm completed an exhaustive study of the campus and concluded that it was Campbell’s existing monumental architecture that made the University unique. The master plan included a goal of expanding facilities for an expanded campus enrollment to 5,600 students over the next several decades. Phase One called for the construction of a convocation center, pharmacy building, chapel, and student apartments. The renovations and expansion portion included the refurbishing and expansion of Marshbanks Dining Hall, improvements to Carter Gym, and upgrades to Murray Hall.

Site projects included the following: the creation of more open space and landscape improvements, such as Purvis Gardens and Folwell Fountain, a Bell Tower, Fellowship Commons, and campus gateways at T.T. Lanier Street and Main Street; the construction of new sidewalks and roundabouts; the planting of trees and shrubs; the demolition of the Welcome Center; and the removal of small non-collegiate buildings.5

In April 2006, the return of football was announced at a special meeting of more than a thousand students, faculty, and staff who had assembled in Turner Auditorium. Along with Fred Taylor, chair of the Board of Trustees, and Bob Barker, chair of the Board of Trustee’s executive committee, Dr. Wallace announced the return of football after a fifty-four-year hiatus. Dr. Wallace said, “Throughout the years, a continuing request from students, alumni, and university friends has been to consider the return of football to the athletic program of the university.” Following a careful feasibility study involving the athletic staff, faculty, students, and alumni, Wallace proudly exclaimed that he was “delighted to announce the Fighting Camels will be back on the gridiron in 2008.” The news was enthusiastically received by those in attendance, and free T-shirts were distributed in front of D. Rich with the slogan “Football is back in 2008!”8

With the master plan as a guide, Campbell’s Buies Creek campus has been dramatically transformed. Today, most of the academic buildings and dormitories have been renovated, and new facilities and new programs for undergraduates and graduates are in place or are being developed. Wallace’s other achievements in 2004 included a $6 million renovation of the D. Rich Memorial Building and the construction of a 302-bed residential facility, Barker Hall, named for Bob Barker, a successful Fuquay-Varina entrepreneur and benefactor who graduated from Campbell in 1965.

The McLeod Athletic Training Facility—home to Campbell’s nationallyaccredited sports medicine program—opened in August 2004. In 2005, construction began on Folwell Fountain and Purvis Gardens, which are adjacent to the business school. In that same year, Barnes & Noble took over management of the campus bookstore (Britt Hall), and the rest of the building was converted into a Chick-Fil-A restaurant. Dining facilities also got a facelift. Shouse Dining Hall underwent a complete renovation and the University added 1,400 square feet to Marshbanks Dining Hall, including a classical portico on the front, new seating spaces, individual

Campbell was accepted into membership in the Pioneer Football League (PFL) as an NCAA Division I-AA non-scholarship program. In the PFL, Campbell competes with Drake, Valparaiso, Morehead State, Butler, Davidson, San Diego, Marist, Dayton, and Jacksonville (Florida). A campaign to raise $12 million to complete the football stadium was also launched and practice fields were completed, as well as the field house with locker rooms and offices. Campbell played its first game on August 30, 2008, against Birmingham-Southern University. More than 5,845 fans were in attendance. The Barker-Lane Stadium was dedicated at halftime honoring the families of Bob Barker and Don Lane, owner of Lane Family Dentistry, for their combined $4 million pledge.9

Right: In 2009, Campbell Football returned once again to the Buies Creek campus.

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Coach Dale Steele, a former member of Elon University’s coaching staff and a twenty-five-year veteran of the NCAA, was named head football coach. Campbell’s first football victory was a road game against Carthage College in Kenosha, Wisconsin, on September 27, 2008. The fall of 2011 represented Campbell’s first winning football season, with a record of 5-3 in the PFL. On September 5, 2009, at halftime, there was a dedication ceremony to name the football field after Edward M. Gore, a longtime friend and benefactor. The old bell in Kivett Hall (circa 1903) was refurbished in 2010 and painted orange and black; it rings whenever Campbell scores a touchdown. Four 102-foot-tall stadium lights were added in the summer of 2012.10

Competitive Progress A return to the Big South

During its first stint as a member of the Big South Conference between 1983 and 1994, Campbell University’s athletics programs won twenty-two conference tournament titles, twelve regular season titles, and the Sasser Cup—awarded to the Big South school with the best overall sports performance—in each of its last three years in the league (1992, 1993, 1994). The Fighting Camels aim to exceed that success in its second stint in the league.

They returned to the Big South Conference in July 2011 from the Atlantic Sun Conference, which they had joined in 1994.

October 17, 2008, marked another milestone in Campbell athletics when President Wallace, Student Government Association President Justin Brand, and Board of Trustees Chair Harold Wells cut the ribbon on the new John W. Pope, Jr. Convocation Center. More than six-hundred people attended the dedication ceremony, which included major contributors Arthur Pope, president of the John W. Pope Foundation; Ed and Dinah Gore, developers from Sunset Beach, North Carolina; Frank Holding, son of Robert P. Holding Sr., founder of First Citizens Bank of North Carolina; and Robert and Patricia Barker of the Bob Barker Company, a manufacturer of detention supplies. The $34-million, 106,000-square-foot facility includes locker rooms; administrative offices; strength and conditioning facilities for the men’s and women’s Fighting Camels basketball teams, volleyball team, and wrestling team; classroom and lab space for the exercise science program; and the Campbell University Sports Hall of Fame. The Gilbert Greg Gore Arena can seat more than three-thousand for athletic events, and upwards of five-thousand for special concerts and graduation events.

The facility also houses the R.P. Holding Sr. Student Fitness Center, which offers state-of-the art exercise equipment and a climbing wall. There is also McCall Court, a practice gym.11

When Campbell returned to the conference of which it was a charter member in 2011, membership of the Big South comprised five private institutions and five state schools, all of which are located in Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina. Round trip travel to all league schools was 4,122 miles, a difference of 5,038 fewer miles than the Camels’ travel to and from Atlantic Sun Conference institutions.

The Camels compete in seventeen of the eighteens sports offered by the league, and will add women’s lacrosse in the spring of 2013. Campbell’s football program, which returned to play in 2008, is a member of the Pioneer Football League, while its swimming and wrestling teams compete in the Coastal Collegiate Swimming Association and as a Division I independent, respectively.

In the fall of 2009, Campbell announced that the university would depart the Atlantic Sun Conference for the Big South Conference effective July 1, 2011. President Wallace expressed joy at Campbell’s Big South prospects: The Big South membership is located in an area where most Campbell students, alumni and major supporters reside. We will feel at home with the excellent and well recognized universities

Left: The landscape of the campus began to change in 2009, with the addition of the John W. Pope, Jr. Convocation Center and two roundabouts.

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of the Big South and look forward to the rivalries we will share…

The Big South Commissioner Kyle Kallander noted Campbell’s return by saying: “It is most appropriate that as we celebrate the Big South’s Conference’s Silver Anniversary, we welcome back one of our founding members, Campbell University. The Big South is proud of its history and heritage, which includes many outstanding performances by Campbell student athletes and coaches. The Big South Conference counts amongst its core values excellence in academics and athletics, leadership, integrity, diversity and fiscal responsibility. The addition of Campbell University reflects those values, and many more. Campbell will be an integral part of the Big South’s efforts in developing leaders through athletics, and we are so pleased to have them back in the family.12

Creation Window, and Resurrection Window. Both windows are custommade, stained-glass art works. The Creation Window depicts “a waterfall, representing the Water of Life as presented in Psalm 42:12. . . . The Resurrection Window in the Gathering Hall offers assurance to visitors as they leave the sanctuary that the resurrected Lord is their hope of eternal Salvation.” The Dinah E. Gore Bell Tower possesses twenty-four carillon bells that were made in the Netherlands. They weigh from forty to 1,400 pounds.

On the north and south axis of the tower, there is a reflection pool.14 In the spring of 2006, Dr. Jerry Wallace announced the appointment of Melissa Essary as first female dean of the Norman Adrian Wiggins School of Law; she began her duties in July 2006. Dean Essary is a summa cum laude graduate of the University of Texas at Austin, and earned her Juris Doctor (magna cum laude) from Baylor University. In the fall of 2007 the Board of Trustees approved the School of Law’s move to Raleigh, and Dean Essary helped facilitate this transition. The new location in the former Hillsborough Building at 225 Hillsborough Street opened on schedule in the fall of 2009.15 Harold B. Wells, chair of the Campbell University Board of Trustees, announced: “We came to this decision after great pause, extensive research and consideration. The Board of Trustees sees this move as an opportunity for Campbell University to further extend its unique approach into legal education into a much broader community.” Dean Essary stated: “The move to Raleigh will create alliances and partnerships that we have yet to imagine.” Other reasons for moving to Raleigh included it being the only capital city in the Southeast that did not have a law school, and one-third of Campbell law students resided in the city.16

Other athletic facilities being upgraded or refurbished during 2010-12 included Taylor Baseball Field, the Amanda Littlejohn Softball Stadium, and a new intramural field located near Gregory Circle. Entrepreneur Irwin Belk made a substantial gift to build a new track facility and nine-foot-tall bronze camel. This official Campbell mascot was placed in the front of the Pope Convocation Center in the spring of 2011.

Groundbreaking for the Robert B. and Anna Gardner Butler Chapel was held on March 12, 2008; the $8-million facility was completed in the summer of 2009, and a formal dedication ceremony was held in October of that year. According to Campbell Magazine, The Anna Gardner and Robert B. Butler Chapel is the fulfillment of a lifelong dream for the late Anna Gardner Butler. A member of Campbell’s class of 1940, she longed for a place to worship with her friends and colleagues on campus. This inspired her and her husband, Robert to give the major gift to a chapel fund in 1997.

Some of the major achievements of the Norman Adrian Wiggins School of Law include the following:

Located on the Academic Circle adjacent to the Taylor Hall of Religion, the 10,000-square-foot chapel seats approximately 400 people. The interior of the chapel includes a sanctuary, gathering hall, bridal suite and administrative office suite.13 The most significant features of the chapel include the Lewis M. Fetterman, Jr. Memorial Garden and Fountain, a Cornel Zimmer Pipe organ, the

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A record of success of the N.C. Bar Exam that is unsurpassed by any other North Carolina law school over the past twentysix years.

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Back-to back national Moot Court championships in 2007 and 2008, including Best Brief Awards in both those years.

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Moot Court Program ranked in the Top Ten nationally by the University of Houston’s Blakely Advocacy Institute.

Right: Robert B. and Anna Gardner Butler Chapel

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Winner of the American Bar Association’s (ABA) E. Smythe Gambrel Professional Award for having the nation’s best student professional program and the American Academy of Trial lawyer’s Emil Gumpert Award for having the top trial advocacy program among U.S. law schools.

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More than fifty Campbell Law graduates serve as judges across North Carolina in District and Superior Courts, as well as on the N.C. Court of Appeals.

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Wiggins Memorial Library The library of today

Card catalogs and the Dewey Decimal System? In today’s electronic, technological-rich world, Campbell University’s Wiggins Memorial Library offers much more than it did just a decade or two ago.

More than three-thousand graduates since 1979 who practice law in forty states and six foreign countries, including more than two-thousand who live and work in North Carolina.17

Maddox Hall—named for Dr. Ronald Maddox, founding dean of the School of Pharmacy—opened in the fall of 2007. This facility includes two large lecture halls, classrooms, faculty offices, and laboratories. Also in the fall of 2009, the School of Pharmacy became the College of Pharmacy & Health Sciences (CPHS), and the new name better represents the true offerings of the school. According to Dean Maddox,

Today, Campbell students, faculty, and students can check out resources from Wiggins that extend far beyond books and journals, including digital cameras, flip video cameras, laptops, e-readers, GPS units, and tablets. The library also provides e-book purchases on demand services and electronic access to more than six-hundred journals in the social sciences, humanities, medicine, engineering, and physical life sciences.

And in the fall of 2012, the library piloted an “embedded librarian” program in which several of the university’s librarians were strategically placed in locations where students spend most of their time receiving classroom instruction. A science librarian, for example, held office hours in Carrie Rich Hall, a medical teaching facility that’s home to the physician assistant program.

My vision for the college very closely aligns with the development of the Harnett County Health Systems. We will develop the physician assistant program (PA), move into physical therapy, nursing programs and closer affiliation for training with medical schools.18 The physician assistant (PA) program was approved by the Board of Trustees in the fall of 2009. The two-year program admits thirty-two students per class, and the Carrie Rich Memorial building was renovated in the fall of 2011 to house the new program. Tom Colletti, who served as the director of the PA program at Duke University, was named founding director. The first students enrolled in the fall of 2011.19

As the library has extended its resources beyond a print collection, demand for the library services has only grown. In August 2008, for example, 9,151 patrons visited the library; in August 2012, the library welcomed nearly 21,000 visitors. The number of people using curriculum materials and media center services also increased from just twenty-three in August 2008 to 796 in August 2012.

The College of Pharmacy & Health Sciences celebrated its twenty-fifth year in 2011. According to Dr. Maddox, “Looking at the past 25 years, one of the most significant memories is when the charter class posted perfect board results. I was proud of our graduates, and these results proved that we have laid a strong foundation for our program.” Other programs launched and approved by the Board of Trustees included a three-year Doctor of Physical Therapy degree, which will welcome its first students in January 2014, and the Master of Public Health degree, a two-year program that focuses on a healthcare workforce not only in rural communities but throughout the entire state.20

Left: Pharmacy, and now PA students, are presented with a white coat at the beginning of their academic journey.

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During the fall of 2010, the Board of Trustees approved the establishment of the Campbell University School of Osteopathic Medicine. The school will become North Carolina’s first medical school in thirty-five years.

According to Dr. Wallace, “Launching a medical school is one of the most important steps ever taken at Campbell University. . . . Our focus will be to train primary care physicians and address a critical shortage of health care professionals throughout North Carolina.”21

Embracing Health Sciences Responding to a Pressing Need

In January 2011, Dr. John Kauffman was named founding dean of the School of Osteopathic Medicine. Kauffman has served the medical profession for the past seventeen years and obtained his medical degree form the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine. On December 9, 2011, a groundbreaking ceremony was held for the Leon Levine Medical Sciences Center, located on Highway 421, near the Keith Hills Country Club. N.C. Governor Beverly Perdue delivered the keynote address and shared her vision of the school’s future for the state:

North Carolina ranks thirty-fifth out of fifty states in the nation in the number of primary-care physicians per resident. Twenty counties in the state don’t even have a single general surgeon.

And the need for licensed physical therapists in North Carolina is projected to increase by 30 percent by 2016; but North Carolina, one of the fastest growing states by population, ranks thirtyeighth out of fifty states in the number of entering licensed PTs. Under Dr. Jerry Wallace’s leadership, Campbell University has committed to helping to address the critical shortage of health care professionals throughout North Carolina by expanding its health sciences programs.

For the area, I believe the largest benefit will be the expansion of Campbell University around a health care complex. But I also have to think about the state as a whole. Around the state we’re going to have a whole range of health care providers, from physician assistants to possibly nurses. The complex is transformational for North Carolina and for Harnett County.22

In the fall of 2013, Campbell University will open the first medical school in North Carolina in thirty-five years when it welcomes its first class of 150 students to its new School of Osteopathic Medicine. Campbell also launched a physician assistant program in 2011. After a twelve-month course load and fifteen-month program of clinical rotations, the inaugural class of nearly seventy-five students will graduate in December 2013.

The medical school is scheduled to open in the fall of 2013 with a charter class of 150 students. In June 2012, the school received provisional accreditation by the Commission on Osteopathic College Accreditation (COCA) meeting in Chicago and was able to actively recruit students and receive applications in July. Within just two months, medical school staff received more than seven-hundred completed applications. It’s predicted that this new medical school will help to alleviate the shortage of medical graduates who specialize in primary care.23

Also, the year 2012 saw the creation of the Master of Public Health program, when Campbell also marked the twenty-fifth anniversary of the College of Pharmacy & Health Sciences. And, in development is the establishment of a Doctor of Physical Therapy program, which is on track to enroll its first students in January 2014. All the programs will emphasize producing graduates who work in rural areas or in regions with little or no health care options.

The Lundy-Fetterman School of Business announced the establishment of the Gore Center for Student Leadership in February 2008. The center provides opportunities for students and faculty to engage in internships, course work, and service projects. Also, outstanding students who distinguish themselves with servant leadership initiatives may qualify for the prestigious Gore Center Servant Leadership Award. The E. Bruce Heilman Leadership Lecture Series complements the university’s call for excellence in student leadership.23

Right: Aerial shot of the Norman Adrian Wiggins School of Law in downtown Raleigh.

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By 2010, Campbell’s Curriculum Council had approved several new concentrations, majors, and minors. Among these were marketing and healthcare management for undergraduates in the Lundy-Fetterman School of Business. The College of Arts and Sciences offered new concentrations in criminal justice and homeland security, and a new major in health communications. The School of Education began offering a major in special education, and the Divinity School initiated a Master of Divinity degree in church music.24 Major construction projects in 2010 included the demolition of Layton Hall (constructed circa 1923) to make way for more green space on the Academic Circle. Wiggins and Kivett Halls were also renovated to house the Department of English and Wiggins Memorial Library. The former university laundry building was renovated to house two physical science and environmental science labs, known as the McLamb Environmental Science Center. New signage was also completed at the entrance of Main Street and Leslie Campbell Avenue. Also, construction began on a new 147-bed residence hall for women in August 2010 and opened in the fall of 2011. The Wells Fountain on the Fellowship Commons was completed, and the L.H. Campbell Hall of Science underwent a $4-million renovation.25 The fall of 2011 marked Campbell’s 125th year of celebrating “Faith, Learning and Service.” Some of the events commemorating the university’s major milestone included an anniversary gala in the Convocation Center and an original play Per Aspera, written by Professor Bert Wallace of Campbell’s Department of Theatre Arts. Of the occasion, the Pine Burr staff wrote: These last 125 years of Campbell’s operation as an education institution have seen numerous changes in the appearance, staff and majors taught at the school. The one thing that has remained the same has been the spirit and mission of the University; which is to strive to instill in all students a sense of Christian heritage and moral values upon which this great school was founded.26 Concerning Dr. Wallace’s tenure, as one Campbell University official has remarked, “It has been full steam ahead, but it has been fun.” The Pine Burr staff in 2008 aptly summed up President Wallace’s accomplishments: “He has seen new academic buildings built, increases in the numbers of students enrolled, new programs introduced, and an increase in Campbell pride.”27

Left: Governor Beverly Perdue and President Jerry Wallace celebrate the groundbreaking of the state’s first medical school in thirty-five years in December 2011.

Right: Renderings of the new facility for the Campbell University School of Osteopathic Medicine.

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Mrs. Betty Wallace  Contagious Spirit 

T

he 1953 Warsaw High School Annual listed Betty Mae Blanchard of Route 1, Warsaw, as the Class of 1953’s Best Personality and the Best All-Around student. Fifty-eight years later, her happy and contagious spirit and hard work in the roles of wife, mother, educator, pastor’s wife, “Campbell’s First Lady,” and Christian disciple earned her the 2011 Campbell University Distinguished Alumna Award. Her college education includes a span of nineteen years. She spent two years at East Carolina University, got married, studied at Southern Seminary, had three children, and then completed her last two years of coursework at Campbell College, where she graduated in 1972 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Education Betty’s church and professional career of forty-three years includes twenty years as a pastor’s wife and twelve years of service as an elementary school teacher in Clarkton and Harnett County-Shawtown Public Schools where she served with distinction as a first grade and kindergarten teacher. She also served for ten years as director of the Curriculum Materials Center at the Campbell University School of Education.

As the wife of Campbell University’s fourth president, she has served Campbell by sharing many of the responsibilities that accompany such a role. Her love, support, and deep pride in Campbell is manifested in every aspect of her life. An avid sports fan, Betty continues to cheer for Campbell; Wake Forest, her son’s alma mater; and East Carolina­—but her Campbell pride is all the way Orange and Black.

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Campbell University, 2012

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Faces of Gaylord Before 1934, Campbell’s athletic teams were known as the “Hornets.”

The origin of the name “Fighting Camels” is popularly believed to be derived from a statement by early school patron Z.T. Kivett, who approached school founder James Archibald Campbell after a fire had destroyed the three then-existing school buildings in 1900 and said, “Your name’s Campbell; then get a hump on you! We’ve got work to do.”

Only one other school in the United States—none in Division I—has the nickname “Camels.”

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Campbell Today The Campbell of today is a product of 125 years of faith, history, and determination. Kivett Hall still stands as a testament of the past and as a part of a rapidly growing campus that includes newer facilities, new programs, and a diverse campus population.

Enrollment: Undergraduate Enrollment (Main and Extended): 4,379 Graduate Students: 532 First Professional Students: 1,073 TARC students: 455 Total Enrollment: 6,439

Schools: College of Arts and Sciences Norman Adrian Wiggins School of Law School of Education Lundy-Fetterman School of Business College of Pharmacy & Health Sciences Divinity School School of Osteopathic Medicine

Acreage: 1,500 Alumni: Total Graduates: more than 57,000

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Resources & Credits James Archibald Campbell Era Pearce, J W. (1976). Campbell College: Big Miracle at Little Buies Creek, 1887-1974. Nashville, TN: Broadman Press, 32.

2 Ibid., 30.

3 Leloudis, James L. (1996). Schooling in the New South, Pedagogy, Self and Society in North Carolina: 1880-1920.

Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 17.

4 Buies Creek Academy (1888). Buie’s Creek Academic Catalog 1887-1888. Retrieved from: http://library. digitalnc.org., 29, 37.

5 Pearce, Campbell College, 40.

6 Ibid., 41.

7 Buies Creek Academy (1895). Buie’s Creek Academy Catalog 1895-1896. Retrieved from: http://library. digitalnc.org., 19.

8 Pearce, Campbell College, 53.

9 Ibid., 50-51.

10 Buies Creek Academy (1894). Buie’s Creek Academy Catalog 1894-1895. Retrieved from: http://library. digitalnc.org.

11 Buies Creek Academy (1895). Buie’s Creek Academy Catalog 1895-1896. Retrieved from: http://library. digitalnc.org, 13.

12 Hoyle, Bernadette (1960?). History of J.A. Campbell.

(Unpublished manuscript), 62-63.

13 Buie’s Creek Academy Catalog 1895-1896, 13.

14 Pearce, Campbell College, 50.

15 Ibid., 80.

16 Ibid., 51, 81.

17 Ibid., 83.

18 Ibid., 85.

19 Ibid., 85.

20 Ibid., 86.

21 Ibid., 86.

22 Ibid., 89.

23 Ibid., 93 24 Buies Creek Academy (1909). Buie’s Creek Academy Catalog 1909-1910; Campbell University. Creek Pebbles, March 5, 1960.

25 Buies Creek Academy (1906). Buie’s Creek Academy Catalog 1906-1907, 15.

26 Campbell University (1912). Pine Burr Yearbook 1912, 46.

27 Buies Creek Academy (1908). Buie’s Creek Academy Catalog 1908-1909, 24.

28 Ibid., 24.

29 Buies Creek Academy (1919). Buie’s Creek Academy Catalog 1919-1920, 304.

30 Buies Creek Academy (1913). Buie’s Creek Academy Catalog 1913-1914, 33.

31 Buie’s Creek Academy Catalog 1908-1909, 24.

32 Blackmon, Bruce. Telephone interview. August 24, 2012.

33 Buies Creek Academy (1918). Buie’s Creek Academy Catalog 1918-1919, 11.

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Buies Creek Academy (1924). Buie’s Creek Academy Catalog 1924-1925, 4.

35 Pearce, Campbell College, 144-145.

36 Ibid., 156.

37 Pine Burr Yearbook 1927, 25.

38 Ibid., 104.

39 Buies Creek Academy (1920). Buie’s Creek Academy Catalog 1920-1921, 4.

40 Draughon, Esther J. (1988). This, That and the Other (Unpublished manuscript), 103.

41 Pearce, Campbell College, 161.

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Leslie Hartwell Campbell Era 1

2 3 4 5 6 7 8

9 10 11 12 13

14 15 16 17

18 19 20

21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35

36 37 38

39 40 41 42 43 44 45

Pearce, Campbell College, 190.

Pine Burr Yearbook 1956.

Creek Pebbles, July 15, 1966; Pearce, Campbell College, 190-193.

Tuck, LHC, Mosaic of Memories, 160-161.

Pearce, Campbell College, 198.

Ibid.

Tuck, LHC, Mosaic of Memories, 159-160.

Pearce, Campbell College, 200.

Tuck, LHC, Mosaic of Memories, 167.

Pearce, Campbell College, 254.

Norman Adrian Wiggins Era

Pearce, Campbell College, 184; Campbell College (1932) Creek Pebbles, April 30, 1932; Tuck, William (1987). Leslie Hartwell Campbell: A Mosaic of Memories, Typescript, 32.

The News & Observer, January 31, 1935.

Tuck, LHC, Mosaic of Memories, 31.

Pearce, Campbell College, 175.

Ibid., 175.

Ibid., 174.

Creek Pebbles, November 22, 1930.

Campbell College (1933). Campbell College Catalog 1933, 383, see diagram.

Ibid., 44.

Creek Pebbles, November 7, 1934.

Tuck, LHC, Mosaic of Memories, 48.

Pearce, Campbell College, 41.

Campbell College Catalog 1933; Campbell University.

The Campbell Times, November 4, 1994.

Creek Pebbles, October 2, 1937.

Tuck, LHC, Mosaic of Memories, 63.

Ibid., 67.

Campbell College (1943). Campbell College Catalog 1943.

Tuck, LHC, Mosaic of Memories, 73.

Ibid., 79.

Pearce, Campbell College, 178; Tuck, LHC, Mosaic of Memories, 79.

Tuck, LHC, Mosaic of Memories, 99.

Ibid., 107.

Tuck, LHC, Mosaic of Memories, 95.

Ibid., 106.

Pine Burr Yearbook 1948, 75, 83.

Pearce, Campbell College, 176-179.

Tuck, LHC, Mosaic of Memories, 109 .

Harnett County News, December 1, 1949.

Tuck, LHC, Mosaic of Memories, 121.

Pearce, Campbell College, 179.

Ibid., 196.

Ibid., 194.

Ibid., 195.

The News & Observer, September 12, 1954.

Tuck, LHC, Mosaic of Memories, 134.

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7 8 9 10 11 12

13 14 15 16 17 18

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20 21

22 23 24 25

26 27 28 29 30

31

108

Tuck, LHC, Mosaic of Memories, 70-71.

Norman Adrian Wiggins, Campbell University: “A Thanksgiving, A Mandate, A Challenge,” 7.

Pearce, Campbell College, 216-217.

Ibid., 222-223 .

Ibid., 224 .

Campbell University (2003). Campbell University Prospect, October 2003, 19.

Creek Pebbles, August 14, 1968.

Pearce, Campbell College, 227-228.

Pine Burr Yearbook 1974, 56.

Pine Burr Yearbooks 1970s.

Pine Burr Yearbook 1974, 2.

Pearce, Winston (1985), Campbell University: Big Miracle at Little Buies Creek, vol. 2, 115-116.

Campbell University News Release, May 2003.

Pearce, Campbell College, 125.

Pearce, Campbell College, 125.

Campbell University Prospect, June 1979.

Pearce, Campbell University, 134-135.

Campbell University. The Energy of Orange 2008-2009 Annual Report, 13.

Wiggins, Campbell University, “A Thanksgiving, A Mandate, A Challenge,” 17, 19.

Pine Burr Yearbook 1987, 370.

Pine Burr Yearbook 1987, 325; Campbell University Prospect, October 2003, 20.

Pine Burr Yearbook 1988, 275. gocamels.com, July 1, 2011.

Pine Burr Yearbook 1995, 39.

Pine Burr Yearbook 1998, 281; The Energy of Orange, 2008-2009, 17.

The Chronicle of Higher Education, September 8, 2000.

Campbell University Prospect, April 2000, 4-8.

Campbell University Prospect, October 2003, 21.

Campbell University Magazine, Fall 2007, 5.

“Norman A. Wiggins,” Campbell University Magazine, Summer 2007, 6.

Howard Covington and Marion Ellis, coeditors (2002), The North Carolina Century: Tar Heels Who Made a Difference, 1900- 2000, Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 265.

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Jerry Wallace Era “Tar Heel of the Week: Jerry Wallace oversees change at Campbell,” The News & Observer, May 13, 2012.

2 The Campbell Prospect, February 2002, 16.

3 Pearce, Campbell University, p 61-63; The News & Observer, May 13, 2012.

4 Jerry McLain Wallace, “Campbell University, Inauguration Address,” April 2, 2004; Pine Burr Yearbook 2005, 58.

5 Campbell University Campus Master Plan, September 2004.

6 Campbell University (2005). Campbell University Magazine, Fall 2005, 1; Campbell University Magazine, Summer 2006, 11.

7 Campbell University Magazine, Summer 2006, 22.

8 Campbell University Magazine, Summer 2006, 25.

9 Campbell University Magazine, Summer 2006, 25-26; Campbell University Magazine, Fall 2008, 18.

10 Campbell University Magazine, Fall 2008, 8-10; CU Faculty and Staff Weekly Newsletter, August 9, 2012, 4.

11 Campbell University Magazine, Fall 2008, 4-5; Campbell University Magazine, Fall 2009, 29.

12 Campbell University Magazine, Fall 2009, 26.

13 Campbell University Magazine, Fall 2009, 4-5.

14 Ibid.

15 Campbell University Magazine, Summer 2008, 21.

16 Campbell University Magazine, Fall, 2007, 21.

17 Campbell University Magazine, Fall 2008, 23.

18 Campbell University Magazine, Fall 2009, 8.

19 Campbell University Magazine, Fall 2011, 12-16.

20 Campbell University Magazine, Fall 2011, 17-18.

21 Campbell University Magazine, Fall 2011.

22 Campbell Times, January 25, 2012.

23 Campbell University Magazine, Fall 2011, 18.

24 Campbell University Magazine, Summer 2008, 18.

25 Campbell University Magazine, Spring 2010, 11.

26 Campbell University Magazine, Spring 2010, 6-7.

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Photography Many of the photos included were recovered from University archives, Pine Burr, Creek Pebbles, academic catalogs, magazines and the Lundy-Fetterman Museum.

Additional photography by: Bennett Scarborough p. 12 Photos from The McNeill’s Ferry Chronicle (1983) p 23, 52 Photos courtesy of Catherine Campbell King p. 33, 37 Photo courtesy of Dorothea Stewart Gilbert