We loved our time in high school – maybe it is the small school size that allowed us to be
50 Years
F
OF COEDUCATION, FRIENDSHIPS, & LOVE
ifty years ago, the first coed class graduated from Sewanee Military Academy. The decision to allow women to attend SMA would alter the trajectories of the lives of many, especially Barbara Reid Bedford SMA ’69 and Henry Bedford SMA ’69.
Maybe it is the small school size that allowed us to be friends with everyone, maybe it’s that time in your life when everything is new and fun,” Barbara reminisces. Their education and romance continued at the University of the South. Barbara was among the first class of four-year women to graduate from the University.
Barbara, who grew up in Sewanee, descends from four generations of stone masons who quarried and cut the sandstone of “the Mountain” to construct the beautiful gothic buildings for which Sewanee is known. Her father was the master stone mason on All Saints’ Chapel. Like her St. Mary’s School classmates, Barbara had an eye for the cadets of SMA. When the Community of St. Mary withdrew from running St. Mary’s School, the heartbreak of its closing in 1968 was lessened by the opportunity to join the cadets on their campus.
The summer of his junior year of college, Henry signed on as a door-to-door Bible salesman with The Southwestern Company. He saw it as an adventure and as a break from the past salaried jobs he had had. With Southwestern he could run his own business. That summer he earned enough money to pay the tuition for his senior year.
Henry, who grew up in Dallas, traveled a bit farther to get to SMA. “I was sent to military school, because I was getting into a lot of trouble,” Henry admits. “I arrived on a foggy day. My father and I had visions of checking in at school and then going out for a nice dinner.” Instead, they were met by someone who took Henry’s trunk and told his father, “Thank you, Dr. Bedford. We’ll take it from here.” Barbara and Henry met just one week after enrolling. Henry had noticed the cute girl sitting in front of him in history class. A mutual friend set them up on a blind date. And the rest, as they say, is history. “We loved our time in high school.
24 · St. Andrew’s-Sewanee Magazine · Fall 2019
After their Sewanee graduation, Henry and Barbara moved to Indiana to sell Bibles again. While Barbara made a home for the couple, Henry was selling, selling, selling. Henry worked 80 hours a week. “I learned to work with rejection and learned to work with people. I learned to keep a schedule and be honest.” He likens the training to preparing
