50 Years of Coeducation, Friendships, & Love

50 Years of Coeducation, Friendships, and Love

Fifty 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.

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.

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. 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.

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.

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 for athletic competition – focus on the basics and do what the leadership tells you. “Sales is more about being disciplined and having a service attitude than anything else.”

Soon, Henry supplemented his SMA, Sewanee, and Southwestern educations with a graduate degree from Southern Methodist University. Barbara worked two jobs to support them while Henry earned his MBA. Not long after graduation, Henry returned to Southwestern. The company was looking for someone to work in business development. They liked to hire people who knew the business from the ground up and who believed in the same principles.

Henry grew with Southwestern, and Southwestern grew with Henry. When he arrived in 1972, Southwestern was a Bible sales company with $12 million in annual revenue. It is now a conglomerate of 20 companies offering investment advisory services, publishing, sales consulting, search services, visa services, and more. They no longer sell Bibles, but they do sell educational products door-to-door with a focus on helping young people achieve the skills they need in life. The workforce has diversified from American college kids to students from around the world. Annual revenue is close to $400 million. Henry, who served as CEO from 2006 to 2018, is chairman of the company.

While Henry helped build the business, Barbara built the family. The Bedfords have four children, Hank, Elizabeth, Khaki, and Logan. Barbara worked outside of the home off-and-on but became a full-time mom after their second child was born. Over the years she has partnered with Henry in helping other young people achieve their goals through what is now the Southwestern Family of Companies. “She’s amazing,” Henry enthuses. “We have dinners at our home for our employees and associates, and she never hires a caterer.” Her record is a sit-down dinner for 65 people. She travels to meetings and forms deep relationships with spouses and team members who have become the couple's close friends.

Last year, Barbara devoted her organizational skills to helping to do something special for their 50th SMA reunion. “I knew we wanted to do something to commemorate this milestone in our lives. We are in touch with a lot of our classmates, but also had lost touch with many. I called our reunion chairs, Mike Flannes and Allen Brooks, and asked if they minded me doing an email to everyone to get updates and create something for us all.” Mike and Allen loved the idea. Barbara’s plan was to make a printed photo book for every returning member of the class and include their stories. She added old photos from previous reunions and the biographical updates that everyone submitted. All of the reunion attendees made contributions to the project.

“The book turned out amazing,” Barbara admits. “We were so excited that everyone was truly appreciative of our efforts, and we know that they will look back at the book often.”

Many of the updates from classmates included mention of retirement, but don’t ask Henry when he plans to retire. He doesn’t consider what he does to be work. “Work is digging ditches. At the Southwestern Family of Companies we help people achieve their goals in life. What could be more fun than that?”

Retirement hardly seems necessary. While still working, Henry has motorcycled across Canada and to Peru and Alaska and has sailed his own boat to Panama. He built a homeless shelter, and he and Barbara are helping rescue North Korean refugees. Barbara has visited 61 countries. Every other Christmas they take the entire family, 10 adults and six grandchildren, on vacation. Henry and Barbara believe that travel with family, helping others in need, and pursuing adventure are the best ways to spend accumulated wealth.

SAS hopes that those travels frequently bring them back to the Mountain where it all began. Fifty-one years since their first date and 46 years since they said, “I do,” Henry and Barbara remain the great romance of that first co-educational class at SMA.