LaGrange College - Quadrangle Yearbook (Lagrange, GA)

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A-18 The 1980 Quadrangle Forty-five Years On The Hill Remembered Well By Instructor At the end of spring quarter 1980, Miss Katherine Cline will have com- pleted her forty-fifth year at LaGrange College. Four of those forty-five years were spent as a student at the college when the hill consisted only of the Dobbs, Hawkes, and Smith buildings. Upon graduation from LC, Miss Cline attended the Peabody Conservatory of Music at Baltimore for 2 years, later returning to LaGrange to take a teaching position at the college. The enrollment at that time was approxima- tely one hundred students, all female. Those were the depression years, when the music department was small and pay was meagre. Miss Cline sup- plemented her teacher ' s salary with fees from private lessons. Over the course of the years Miss Cline has taught music to four blind students. Her first, a girl named Helen, she remembers particularly well. Helen ' s majors, reported Miss Cline, were piano organ and English. She was an excellent student and performed well on recitals. To prevent mishaps, Helen was taught the exact number of steps from a spot off stage to the piano bench. Awed audiences would hold their breaths, amazed, as Helen made her way unfalteringly to the bench to play her pieces on recital. Of course, Miss Cline pointed out, everything Helen played was memorized. She would learn the mechanics of each hand separately, finally combining them to complete the process. Miss Cline learned a great deal from her sightless pupils, even learning M. White LaGrange College music instructor Katherine Cline remembers Dobbs fire, teaching blind students, and a once state-noted music department in which she taught both piano and organ. to understand a little braille. The 1950 ' s and early 1960 ' s herald- ed the peak of the music department at LaGrange College. Included were band, orchestra, and chorus. From poor instruments and out-of-tune pianos Miss Cline, with the help of Dr. Waights Henry, built the music depart- ment to include approximately ten pianos and a fifty thousand dollar pipe organ. The new organ, a Moller which required six weeks for installment, replaced an old organ built in the 1800 ' s and purchased from the Capital Theater. In spite of all this equipment, the music major was dropped from LaGrange College in the spring of 1967. Miss Cline recollected the Dobbs fire of November, 1970, when the oldest building on campus was destroyed. Along with Dobbs went nine pianos and the eleven-year old pipe organ, valued then at seventy thousand dollars. A Steinway Grand piano, previously taken to Dr. Estes ' residence, escaped along with a Baby Grand which was kept in the President ' s house. Today the Steinway Grand resides in Smith Parlor and the smaller piano is in use in Miss Cline ' s studio. These two pianos are all that remain of the early days of the music department at LC. Katherine Cline, however, has wonderful memories of the music department. Proficient on the piano, organ, and violin, she has been an asset to the college in general and to the music department in particular. Asked if she thought the music department would thrive again at LaGrange, Miss Cline replied that, because of the money factor involved, there will probably never be another full fledged music department at LC.

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The 1980 Quadrangle A-17 Jimmy Carter A— Learns About . The White House Hostages in Iran Mt. St. Helens Inflation Cuban Immigration The Draft ABSCAM Russian Intervention Olympic Boycott Unemployment SALT Talks

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The 1980 Quadrangle A-19 Dr. Hagood Inaugurated Dr. Charles L. Hagood was inaugu- rated LaGrange College ' s twentieth president Friday morning, April 20, 1980, in ceremonies in Price Theater. Charles D. Hudson, Chairman of the Board of Trustees, presided at the ceremony attended by college trustees, officers, representatives of learned societies, educational associations and foundations, members of the senior class, officers of the student govern- ment, members of the alumni associa- tion, the LaGrange College Singers and interested students. After the ceremony of investiture, President Hagood told the audience, ' Our only rationalization for existence is that dream our forebears had nearly a century and a half ago of providing quality education within a personalized setting against the backdrop of a religious faith. Never have we, never can we, not never do we desire to compete educationally in terms of numbers or physical resources. To describe the philosophy that will enpower us to achieve our appoint- ed destiny as a Christian college is exceedingly difficult in this pluralistic age and even more difficult to actualize. It involves more than advertising our faith by organizing prayer groups, displaying bumper stickers and button- holing people with stories of conversion. Rather than providing simplistic answers that fail to hold up in hard hours, it means an honest confrontation with life ' s complexities. Whatever else is involved in being a Christian community on the college level, it does mean responding seriously and sympathetically to human needs and individually preparing persons to realize their fullest human potentials. Of necessity that calling will involve our willingness to be ever open to the infinite wisdom of the God who alone understands how our dreams can be translated into reality. Bishop William R. Cannon, Re- sident Bishop, Atlanta Area, The United Methodist Church, gave the principal address including the follow- ing points: The abiding Christian contribu- tion to college life is the institutional recognition of the supreme importance of good character. We cannot really educate unless we apperceive a set of values, a standard of life above and beyond the mere acquistion of know- ledge, sacred as well as secular. The test of LaGrange College will be the quality of the lives of its graduates - their contribution, not only to themselves and their families, but to the society and the world, he contin- ued. Will the times in which they live and work be better because of them, because they have lived in those times? Our mission is not merely that of dispensing knowledge and teaching students how to earn a living: it is to aid them in the formation of their good lives. The formal procession, with Dean Malcolm Shackelford as Grand Mar- shal, was composed of representatives of colleges and universities throughout the United States and abroad. It was led by representative of Katholieke Universiteit, Leuven, Belgium, founded in 1425, and concluded with the representative of Gordon Junior Col- lege, established in 1972. Bishop Cannon led the prayer of consecration following the inauguration and LaGrange College Chancellor Waights G. Henry, Jr., former pre- sident, gave the benediction. Very few students ever have the opportunity to experience the inaugura- tion of a college president, especially their own president. LaGrange Collge students that attended the ceremony saw a historical event for the school, and it will be remembered as a memory of college life.