Editor’s Note: For now over 75 years, Baylor Line has been publishing vivid storytelling from across the Baylor Family. I don’t think our archives full of deep, inspirational features should live solely on shelves, so we are bringing them back to like in BL Classics. On today’s National Day of Mourning for Jimmy Carter, Hal Wingo’s […]
New buildings like the Baylor Science Building and Paul L. Foster Campus for Business and Innovation show the growth of campus. Renovations to existing buildings exude change in what was once a stability on campus. Even discussions about names of buildings and removing statues may come to mind. So what is the same? We can
Theirs was a love story for the ages with all the passion and intrigue of a Victorian-era romance — a courtship that included 573 love letters and a secret marriage at St. Marylebone Church in London on September 12, 1846, over her tyrannical father’s objections. He later disinherited her, and she never saw him again after she and her husband started a new life in Italy, where their son was born three years later. His given name was Robert Wiedeman Barrett Browning, but they called him Pen. Though inseparable during their lifetimes, the lovers are buried nearly a thousand miles apart: Elizabeth in the Protestant Cemetery in Florence and Robert in Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey, London. Six years his senior, Elizabeth was just 55 when she died in her husband’s arms at their home in Florence of chronic lung disease. Father and son moved back to London where Browning established himself as a leading literary figure. He never married again, nor did he visit Florence after his wife’s death. Then in 1889 while visiting Pen at his home in Venice, Browning died of natural causes. He was 77 years old.
Walter Davis Gernand was born February 15, 1917, in Beaumont, Texas, the youngest of the three sons of Clarence A. and Catherine Perthuis Gernand. Julius “Julie” William (February 4, 1913) and Clarence “Bubba” James (October 17, 1914) rounded out the household at 1575 Emile St. All three Gernand brothers enrolled at Baylor University in the
The story of William Martin “Clu” Gulager’s journey, from tiny Holdenville, Okla., to becoming a star of beloved television series like The Virginian and films like The Killers and The Last Picture Show, would make a rip-snorting good movie itself. The son of vaudevillian/Broadway actor John Delancy Gulager, who left the stage to become a
From Shakespeare to Shoot-em-Ups: The Remarkable 70-Year Career of Clu Gulager Read More »
He first pulled up to Brooks Hall on move-in day in 1956, behind the wheel of a brand-new, red and white Chevrolet station wagon. His name was Kenneth Reuben Durham, he’d driven five hours from his Panhandle hometown of Tahoka, and he was beaming. There was nowhere he’d have rather been at that moment. From
For a time in the 1950s, Baylor graduate John Paul Stapp was the holder of the land speed record and was as famous as Col. Chuck Yeager. Once featured on the cover of Time magazine, Stapp is considered the “Father of the Seat Belt” in the United States and is even credited with coining one
Col. John Paul Stapp: There Was Much More Than Speed to the Fastest Man on Earth Read More »
Her name was Cindy Campbell Brown. Her age was 26. She was a Secret Service agent whose office was on the top floor of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. On April 19, 1995 at 9:02 a.m., Timothy McVeigh, 26, a U.S. Army veteran poisoned with anti-government hate, set off a truck bomb in front of the building where Cindy worked. McVeigh had designed and built the bomb by hand along with his co-conspirator Terry Nichols. The blast sheared off the front of the 9-story, glass front federal building, reducing it to rubble. The ensuing devastation killed 168 people, including Cindy.
Her Name Was Cindy Campbell Brown. She Died In 1995. And It’s Time You Knew Her Story. Read More »
Of its many achievements, Baylor particularly enjoys two distinctions: that of being the oldest university in Texas (established by the Republic of Texas in 1845, before statehood) and the first university west of the Mississippi to go coed, 75 years before American women were guaranteed the right to vote. Though BU’s gender history may be complicated—the university segregated for about 35 years in 1851—there is no surer sign of its inclusivity than the legions of female Baylor graduates who continue to honor the university through their accomplishments.
The Mayborn Museum special exhibit, curated by Dr. Kenneth Hafertepe, is spotlighting where residents find solace in the divine throughout Waco and provides visitors with an excellent survey of the city’s religious evolution across faith traditions.
