Mississippi College - Tribesman Yearbook (Clinton, MS)

Page 11 text:

vr President W. T. Lowrey H K happiest fortune that can attend one’s birth is that he comes of parents of sterling character. This is a notable fact in the birth of the subject of this sketch. His father was one of ten children left to the care of a widowed mother when he was but four years old, and from that tender age his life was a struggle. He was converted at seventeen, went to the Mexican War at eighteen, married at twenty- one, and entered the ministry at twenty-four. His mother was a woman of exceptional native excellence, who with her marvelous industry and practical sense added a reserve power to her husband’s strength, which largely counteracted his lack of early training and made possible the splendid achievements of his later life. By wise use of small opportunities he educated himself after marriage, and rose steadily into commanding prominence as preacher, soldier, educator, and citizen. In the Civil War he rose to brigadier general, was called “the fighting preacher of the Army of Tennessee,” and was introduced by General Pat Cleborne as “the bravest man in the Con- federate Army. ” Such parentage is the best possible introduction into life. W. T. Lowrey came also of a large family. There were eleven children, and he was the eldest of six brothers. Such a family, if of wise parents, is in itself a school of life, calling for so much mutual concession and self-denial. It keeps one from growing self-centered, and fosters in him the sweet amenities of life. This effect is heightened when conditions are hard, and W. T. Lowrey’s childhood and youth were cast in north Mississippi in a time of civil war and reconstruction, a period of great adversity. From eight to sixteen years of age he worked on the farm and studied at home with brief intervals of attendance on the country schools. He was converted at eleven years of age. He was prepared for college by Capt. T. B. Winston, of Blue Mountain Male Acade my. He entered Mississippi College in the fall of 1878, and was graduated in three years with first honors. The writer’s first personal knowledge of him was when he entered Mississippi College in 1878. He then won a place in his esteem and love which he holds yet, only in a larger and richer measure. He remembers him as elegant in appearance, amiable in disposition, and winning in manner, beloved of faculty and students. He was a winner of friends, and knew how to be friendly. He liked the boys and loved the girls. He was a good mixer and was prominent in society work. If he ever had an enemy, I never heard of it. He had expected to enter the profession of law until about the time of his graduation, when he felt it his duty to enter the ministry. After graduation in June, 1881, he entered in the fall the So uthern Baptist Theological Seminary at Louisville, Kentucky, and when he was about completing his Senior year there, was called home by the sudden death of his father and succeeded him as President of Blue Mountain Female College. This position he as- sumed on his twenty-seventh birthday, and on the first of September following married Miss 7

Page 10 text:

Editorial NITIATIVE! B What is the initiative?” asks Elbert Hubbard. “It is,” he says, ‘ doing the right thing without being told. But next to doing the thing without being told, he continues, “is to do it when you are told once.” Inspired by the spirit of initiative, it was decided by the student body last year that we should have an annual; this was the right thing at the right time. Then a staff was selected, and told to issue it; this, a necessary evil, was the next best thing: “But,” adds the Philistinian, “your pay is not always in proportion.” “Nothing, not even a blade of grass,” says Epictetus, “ever attained to perfection suddenly.” In doing the first thing for the first time, there is always an element of uncertainty, which cannot be removed and which can be minimized only by a vast amount of labor. It has been our utmost endeavor to produce an annual commensurate with the greatness of Mississippi College. The value of the product of our labor we measure by our success in accomplishing this. With much of gratification and some- thing of pride, we present the result, and believe the annual that surpasses it will be an eminent success. Gratitude ? Stacks of it. To those who aided us, to those who encouraged us, to those who counseled us, to the student body as a whole, and to the Faculty, are due it. Our annual, as representing the new era on which we are entering, is now an institution. We have attempted to set a standard, and may it with every succeeding issue be raised higher and higher. 6

Page 12 text:

Theodosia Searcy, daughter of Dr. J. B. Searcy, of Arkansas. He filled this position with eminent success for thirteen years, when he accepted the presidency of Mississippi College. This step marks an epoch in his life, and in the history of Mississippi College, opening up to him a greatly enlarged field of operation for his peculiar abilities and inaugurating a period of greatly enlarged prosperity for the College. Dr. Lowrey forms his opinions with great deliberation and holds to them with great per- tinacity. He has made a science of acquaintanceship and magnifies the good that is in others. He has a genius for friendship and personal loyalty is a principal source of his power. His manner of life has tended to make him a man of affairs rather than a scholar, and has developed his inherited gift of leadership. It is doubtful if a politician in Mississippi has so large a personal acquaintance with his constituency as Dr. Lowrey has with the Baptist con- stituency in Mississippi. He has shown great State pride and loyalty. A close observer has recently said that one of the striking facts of our time is the conspicuous ability of the educational leaders in the Southern States, and that educational work there is a form of statesmanship, and appeals to men of the very highest grade of ability. Dr. Lowrey s work is constructive, and his talent is executive rather than critical. He is showing himself able to project and exploit large and safe plans for the steady enlargement of the work and influence of one of the oldest and most useful of Southern colleges. What he is doing for Mississippi College is giving him prominence as an educational force in the South, and few roles are more honorable or conspicuous now than that of com- manding leadership in educational work. He has been fortunate in coming into the presidency of the College at a time of general prosperity and widespread educational awakening, when there is more disposition and ability to aid education, and a more general thirst for it. The man and the occasion have met, and he has not only utilized, hut has intensified these cooperating tendencies among Mississippi Baptists, and has made them effectual in the material enlargement of endowment and in one hundred and twenty thousand dollars already secured for new buildings, and in patronage increased to a present enrollment of four hundred and thirty-two students, with improved conditions on every hand, promising a glorious future for the College, with the time not far distant when she will have ample buildings and equipment for a thousand students. The things that have been in the mind and the heart of the President and the Board and the brother- hood are now taking shape and will in a few years transfigure the old campus. What Dr. Lowrey has been able already to accomplish, and what he is on a still larger scale planning to do, is on the foundation of less conspicuous hut equally grand work done by noble predecessors in office, whose work of toil and tears amid impossible conditions we must never allow to he obscured nor forgotten. P. H. E. 8