By the time she first set foot on the Baylor campus in 1963, Pam Dial Taylor had been a cheerleader since junior high school. In fact, she’d already spent summers leading camps around the country for the National Cheerleaders Association.
We’re talking about one serious cheerleader.
When she arrived in Waco, however, Pam learned something that anyone else would have found deflating––perhaps even devastating. Baylor, along with Texas A&M and other traditionally-minded universities, fielded only male Yell Leaders. No women cheerleaders, and no apparent plans to add them. Male cheer was, quite simply, a Baylor tradition: a status quo the powers-that-be seemed quite happy to maintain.
As we all know and appreciate, Baylor holds its traditions dear.
If Pam minded this, however, she never breathed a word. Despite a challenging transition—dropped off early at a near-empty campus without knowing a soul—the sophomore transfer from Amarillo wasted no time falling in love with her new school.
One major cause of Pam’s affection stemmed from being at a school where her faith felt affirmed and nurtured. She’d spent her freshmen year at a secular college which she now describes as “… quite an awakening for a First Baptist Girl.”
Yet, as her classmates sensed from the beginning, Pam’s love for Baylor seemed to flow from somewhere even deeper. While the outgoing newcomer was not naïve, no polyanna or “square”—a label nobody wanted in those days—she had a genuinely positive and joyful way about her. Even today, longtime friend Drayton McLane asks with a chuckle, “Have you ever seen Pam Taylor in a bad mood?” Indeed, she seemed relentlessly inclined towards things in life worth honoring and celebrating.
And if you consider the essence of “cheerleading,” or cheering for, Pam’s sunny disposition fits perfectly. To cheer—or “be of good cheer”—is actually a quality human beings have valued throughout history. Christ Himself, after the Last Supper, exhorted the Twelve to “… be of good cheer, for I have overcome the world.” He was not instructing them to deny reality or sugarcoat the darkness, but to draw strength instead from the light. For Pam, this seemed like second nature. She was truly a consummate cheerleader: not only adept with pom-poms and Herkie jumps, but a deep-down, living embodiment of the word.
Pam’s unfeigned joy is a huge reason why, despite no legacy contacts or prior Baylor connections, she was invited to join the Atheneans: one of Baylor’s most prestigious sororities and the precursors to today’s Kappa Kappa Gamma. She also began dating a young man who was a leader in one of its most respected men’s organizations.
Pam’s popularity soared so high, so fast, that she came to the attention of Baylor’s trailblazing and revered Dean of Women, Virginia Crump. In Pam, Crump recognized a chance to make history. For years, the forward-thinking administrator had chafed against Baylor’s lack of female cheerleaders and worked behind the scenes to address the problem. What she needed most, at this stage of her efforts, was an initial candidate strong enough to overcome Baylor’s institutional resistance. Finally, one had presented herself.
Then, as Crump prepared to broach the subject with Pam, a welcome distraction intervened—the Atheneans nominated her to the 1966 Homecoming Court. Pam rode high through the streets of Waco, waving carefully to avoid electrocution from overhead power lines and traffic lights, perched atop the soaring tail of a 20-foot skunk named “FiFi.” That afternoon, she found herself with 29 other candidates, squinting into the stands of Floyd Casey Stadium for a glimpse of Mom and Dad—who had made a surprise drive from Amarillo—when the P.A. system boomed out an oddly familiar name. Only when every face turned her way, and a roar of applause erupted, did the truth finally hit home. High above her, Pam’s mother jumped to her feet and screamed, “She’s ours!”
Within days, Crump made her pitch. She asked Baylor’s new queen to lay her popularity on the line to smash an historic gender barrier. Pam asked for time to pray about the step and shared the invitation with her boyfriend. The popular young man tested the waters with fraternal brothers and friends, and came back with a reply that struck Pam like the proverbial lightning bolt.
No.
We are not doing this. (Note the use of “we,” presuming veto power over her decision.)
Do not rock the waters. Do not break tradition.
Asked today how she felt about this, Pam shrugs sadly and shakes her head. “I should have stood up for it,” she concedes, “but I didn’t.” This was her outcome—and that was that. Not worth dwelling on. The man she thought she would marry had laid down the law. Her beloved Baylor classmates had seemingly cast their vote. A good cheerleader doesn’t let one bad play keep her from celebrating the next—and there was no use letting one disappointment, however painful, crush her spirit.
For us today, in a more egalitarian age of female-centered cheerleading squads, the rejection seems hard to fathom. In 1966, however, Crump’s attempt came off as yet another skirmish in a cultural war over feminism. “Women’s Lib” was on the march, the National Organization for Women had just been founded, and gender walls were falling everywhere. Everywhere except Waco, that is. It hardly helped that the University of Texas had unveiled female cheerleaders several years before—and no good Bear is ever keen to follow the hoofsteps of Longhorn precedent.
Pam wore her game-face when she gave Crump her disappointing response, and Crump wasted no time on a counter-move. She appointed Pam as what she labeled Baylor Hostess: a highly visible, highly selective position that involved flying to away-games as a female ambassador, clad in a bright green suit with gold shoes and purse. Not only was it a flanking maneuver towards Crump’s goal, but a sharp message.
Women support the football team as passionately as the men—and they deserve an active role in doing so.
One year later, Baylor finally named its first female cheerleader.
It was too late for Pam—at least officially—but not too late to savor the victory. First of all, the young woman in question was Peggy Pate, a friend and cheerleading camp protegeé. And when The Iscani magazine, Baylor’s campus periodical, featured Peggy on its cover, standing right behind her was none other than Pam: wearing the Baylor cheerleader’s uniform that had eluded her and a bright, indomitable grin.
She only wore the uniform for five minutes—denied but not erased.
Pam graduated soon after; her relationship with the domineering boyfriend a distant memory, eclipsed by the appeal of a different young man altogether.
Tom Taylor had caught her eye in a crowded cafeteria years before, when they co-taught another of those summer-break cheerleading camps. He was ruggedly handsome, seemingly content to sit alone even when surrounded by beautiful young women, and sweeter still was the reason: he was praying. No one else prayed at these loud, festive mealtimes, but this young man did. One long, earnest, unashamed bow of the head.
Oh, and Tom was a cheerleader.
A Texas Longhorn cheerleader.
Irony too sweet for words.
Pam took a teaching position in Austin, their relationship deepened, and on the eve of another Baylor-Texas game, he presented her with a huge mum reading Hook Them Bears and asked her to marry him. Pam gazed into his anxious face—that of a man who did not consider her a foregone conclusion—and gave him an emphatic yes.
Pam’s new husband was an actor, a graduate theater student working on his Master’s thesis, so after a Spring Break wedding and a quick Denver honeymoon, he resumed his work in earnest. Drawn to the inspiration of his favorite singer, Bob Dylan, Tom was busy dramatizing the life of folk icon Woody Guthrie, of This Land is Your Land fame.
Tom’s thesis was embraced with accolades. Not long after the birth of their daughter Holly, his faculty adviser flew him to perform it in Edinburgh, Scotland. The performance was a smash. Tom returned stateside to sign with Guthrie’s own talent agent and take his show on the road. Rave reviews followed him to Los Angeles and across the country, making the next step inevitable: Tom began touring and acting full-time .
As Pam stayed at home, caring for daughter Holly and son Bryan, teaching school and of course cheering him on, those early years gave them much to celebrate. In addition to the play, Tom began appearing in TV sitcoms, miniseries and feature films. He befriended acting legends and even played a day-bit on Dallas, the most high-flying TV show of its time.
However, life as a successful yet not-A-list actor proved more challenging than glamorous. Tom’s once-constant presence was all-too often replaced by a voice on the family phone, calling from parts unknown. A command White House performance for President Carter and his family—complete with a private visit with Pam, Holly and Bryan—encouraged them all—yet also motivated Tom to double down on his attempts. In the year that followed, those efforts took him away from home over 300 days. In an age before cell phones and FaceTime, Zoom and social media, of landlines tethered to kitchen walls and busy schedules, Tom’s sporadic check-ins began to feel like holiday greetings from a distant relative.
Pam finally hit rock bottom. In 1980, in a period of heartbreak and turmoil she still finds hard to discuss, she did what would have once been unthinkable. She filed for divorce. That seemingly inexhaustible supply of good cheer and positive endurance had, for the first time in her life, actually run dry.
Fortunately for Pam, the soil in which she’d planted those seeds proved more fertile than she knew. What came next shocked everyone—especially her.
Tom responded with what Pam today can only describe as “… the heart of Jesus.” His message back to her went something like this.
I want you to be free.
If someone else is better for you, I want that. I will help you.
I love you. I’m here for you. I will not try to stress you or pressure you in any way.
It was a formidable pledge, but Tom fulfilled it. He quit his acting career in midstream, shut down the play and returned to Belton for an ordinary, “civilian” job. Moving to a home nearby, he set about becoming a present father to their children.
In the months that followed, Pam’s emotions started to thaw—and less than a year later, she rewrote the script of Baptist gender norms by proposing marriage to the father of her children. They remarried, their children, family, and friends beaming beside them, in a ceremony that felt to everyone like one communal and grateful sigh of relief.
While it might sound poetic to announce that Tom Taylor never acted again, quite the opposite is true. The rebirth of her marriage also sparked a renaissance of both Tom’s and Pam’s creative endeavors. Tom became a beloved Theater Director at area schools, leading the program at Killeen High School and taking his acting troupes to venues across the region.
But artistic talent also brought Pam and Tom together as a husband-and-wife performing team. Piecing together thousands of lyrics he had written over the years, the Taylors went on the road offering evenings of duets, solos, dramatic readings, and skits. To their well-blended voices, Tom added guitar and harmonica, and Pam emerged as a hilarious talent on the kazoo. Most performances concluded with the account of how God had brought a seemingly doomed marriage back to life.
This period also gave Pam a chance to double-down on her dedication to Baylor. For years, she and Tom had poured themselves into “Spirit Grams”—individualized messages to Baylor players, including a prayer and a word of encouragement—and driven them to Waco to place under every helmet before home games.
Pam threw herself into leading the Central Texas Baylor Club: bringing care packages to campus before finals, hosting Baylor Women’s Brunch gatherings with campus speakers and “Baylor Round-Up” events in every nearby community that would host one. She began serenading honorees with Baylor Girl, the musical ode she wrote to honor its leading women. Central Texas Send-Off parties became incomplete without a Pam Taylor rendition of It’s So Nice to be a Baylor Bear, extolling the joys of Bear-hood and digging lyrical pokes at opposing schools. (“Just think – I might’ve been a white and purple Frog / Or, even worse, a mangy Aggie puppy dog / Whoooo wants to be an Owl? Or a U.T. unholy cow? / Or a Pony, Raider, Cougar or a Hog?”)
The song winds up with a stanza that seems lifted straight out of her life. (“Baylor is a place where I could be me / It never could have happened at U.T. / I could study, I could play… why, I could even pray / Baylor is a place where I could be me.”)
In 1994, Pam was given the Baylor Alumni Association’s W.R. White Meritorious Service Award—given on the same day it was awarded to Grant Teaff. By that time, Drayton McLane had become a friend and admirer. “Baylor meant everything to Pam,” he says, “and she has relived that. Her powerful faith and love have made Pam a lighthouse for Baylor.”
But eventually, after a fall and a broken hip, Tom started to miss a beat. Those hand-written lyrics stopped flowing as smoothly. The stellar acting talent developed a stutter-step. A dementia diagnosis crashed into the Taylors’ hard-won second act, and Pam’s penchant-for-the-positive was thrown into its hardest season yet.
Ironically, a husband whose globe-trotting absences had once ended their marriage began to cling so close that he rarely left her side. Hand clasping hers, Tom escorted Pam to her work in the offices of their church home: First Baptist, Belton. There he sat beside her, silent and smiling, while Pam greeted members and visitors with that trademark, un-dimmed grin. Tom would eventually enter Belton’s Stoney Brook Memory Care facility. A favorite time together became their daily viewing of The Andy Griffith Show: a comforting visit with images that felt like old friends.
Finally, Tom entered hospice care. And one night after Pam’s endurance reached a low point, she agreed to return home for badly needed rest.
That is when the fateful call came.
Every life deserves a cheerleader; even after it’s over. Especially after it’s over. The subject may leave, “graduate,” but their memory never does. Today, Pam invites every visitor, from appliance repairman to visiting writer, to pause in her foyer for a glance at a marriage healed by God’s power.
All the milestone photographs are there: from Tom’s cheering days to his glory years of acting acclaim, the craggy maturity of father, grandfather and aging companion. With a wistful smile and a soft, warm voice, Pam tells the story of a union that spanned fifty-five years: including, as she delights in putting it—one little divorce that didn’t take.
Pam doesn’t linger long. The day is not yet over. A senior yoga class awaits, and many of its “girls” depend on her, as Pam’s is the only Christian light some of them know. Besides: there are widows back at Stoney Brook to encourage with hymn singing, a Bible Study, and a sunny presence. Later in the week, a Baylor committee meeting. Maybe another rendition of Baylor Girl, or It’s So Great to Be a Baylor Bear.
Pam’s gratitude is stronger than ever. The blessing of Tom left her a legacy that surrounds her now with memories and the companionship of children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Her alma mater lives on in the story of a Baylor Beauty who overcame a painful brush-off and spent the next six decades cheering it on anyway—with such joy, sincerity and enthusiasm that Drayton McLane today calls her “… the most devoted Baylor alumna I’ve ever known.”
In his mind, and those who know her, Pam Dial Taylor has always been Baylor’s ultimate cheerleader.
