Wofford College - Bohemian Yearbook (Spartanburg, SC)

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FROM THE PRESENT . . . OF PROGRC:S:§i AT . . . Wo otd College FROM THE PAST . . .

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W. E. Burnett Gymnasium, now the Music Hall. Cleveland Street when students boarded there. A CENTURY OF PROGRESS The last dawn had risen on Benjamin Wofford. The lean, lanky ex-circuit rider, grim and avaricious of countenance whom men called miser, lay dying in the early hours of morning, at peace with the world. Upon his tomb in a back-country church- yard were carved these words: He gave to the country and to the church an institution for the benefit of which countless thousands yet unborn may have reason to be thankful and reverence the owner ' s name. Wofford is gone but in a sense he lives still in the hearts, hopes, and dreams of those whose footsteps have echoed down through the years across a campus, rich in the memories and traditions of the past. He was in a sense more important in death than in hfe, for this tall, sinister figure, whose one good eye gleamed balefully from behind thick green spectacles, left a legacy which no man could anticipate from a miser ' s horde. Upon this slender foundation has been reared an edifice of spiritual grandeur, which over the past hundred years of progress has sent its graduates into every station of hfe, and has sent its graduates to the far-flung corners of the globe. It is our inten- tion to trace within these pages the amazing growth of Wofford College since the first students entered the original classrooms a century ago. The past is spent but the glorious tradition which it has woven will live on in perpetuity so long as there are Wofford men who love and revere their Alma Mater. We intend in this volume to restore through the medium of word and picture som.ething of the lustre of bygone days, to revive a fireside memory or two for an old graduate here and there who may out of curiosity leaf through these pages and remember men long dead and events as long forgotten with nostalgic reminiscence. Within these pages are, for example, to be found photographs of past presidents of the college, who step by step have raised the institution they served from the depths of poverty and despair to the pinnacle of success and prosperity — men who though gone and largely forgotten by a student body, which if it thinks of them at all, thinks only of mute chapel portraits of unknown figures of yesteryear, dressed in the picturesque costume of an era long past, hve on in the lasting monuments of bricks, stone, and mortar which surround us in the quiet beauty of a campus scene. There is on another page, for example, a photograph of Bishop W. M. Wightman who made the keynote address at the laying of Wofford ' s famous cornerstone, a monument not merely to things physical, but even more a spiritual dedication initiating a milestone in the history of education which can never be forgotten. A few lines from this magnificent oration of a man who was destined to serve as the first president of the college and the first chairman of the Board of Trustees might not be inappropriate here. And now having drawn upon your patience thus far, we address ourselves to the laying of this cornerstone. We lay it for thee and in the name of the Holy Ghost, for the good of posterity we plant the foundation of this institution. After the lapse of ages, and amid whatever chances or changes may in the eventful future befall our political institutions, may this corner- stone support a fabric still flourishing in its early freshness. And sooner crumble this granite into dust than perish from the minds and hearts of our countrymen and successors the great principles which have t his day been enunciated and which lie at the foundation of all our virtues as individuals, all our glory as a nation. Even as Wightman spoke these words the storm clouds of secession were gathering ominously over the nation and many of the South ' s traditional institutions were being grievously threatened. War came, but even amid the clash of musketry and the roar of cannon, the college continued to operate, though it was at the time httle more than a Greek classical school with only a handful of students too young to engage in the mighty struggle going on around them. In connection with this dramatic era might be mentioned the 5