For now over 75 years, The 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 life in BL Classics. This November, 1980 Classic article recounts the conception of Baylor’s mace shared from the perspective of its creator, an origin story of tenacious spirit, Baylor history, and on-campus antics.
Graduation is usually a happy time, a time when past, present, and future blend in a unique way. For centuries, universities have marked the moment with special ceremonies. My graduation from the doctoral program of the University of Texas in 1973 was euphoric. The special ceremonies were impressive. Lights, music, regalia, solemnity — and maces, lots of maces — made a profound impression.
The maces fascinated me. Each major academic division of the university had a mace which had been designed and manufactured by the School of Engineering. As a regular participant in Baylor commencement ceremonies, I knew that old Baylor had the lights, music, regalia, and solemnity, but no mace. I wanted Baylor to have a mace.
At a luncheon soon after my graduation, a Waco attorney who had listened to me talk about wanting a Baylor mace offered to help acquire a genuine relic from the Crusades that he had located. Desire and possibility boiled over on a Sunday morning in President McCall’s Sunday School class at First Baptist Church. Over pre-lesson coffee, I was again talking about a mace. Bill Bailey, a party to the conversation, dropped the manna from heaven. “Abner, Roberta [Roberta Hatch Bailey] and I would like to finance that project if you want to pursue it.” Happily, the president was willing.
A subsequent conversation in McCall’s office revealed the fact that a mace had been the topic of conversation several times in Baylor’s past, but the project had never come to fruition. McCall, while favoring the idea of a mace, said he thought that a relic from the Crusades, while abundantly significant in Christian tradition, would be lacking in Baylor symbolism. As he talked, he gestured with a recent gift to Baylor from the Burleson family — the walking cane that had belonged to Rufus C. Burleson. The Lord will provide!
With permission to bring back a recommendation for a mace replete with Baylor symbolism, I made my next stop at The Texas Collection. The director, Kent Keeth, welcomed the request for usable artifacts and enlisted the aid of William L. Ming, head of acquisitions and bibliography. Kent and Bill produced two artifacts which seemed ideal, a gold-headed walking cane that had belonged to Sam Houston at the time he attended Independence Baptist Church and a sword with a cross-shaped gold hilt that had been awarded by President Andrew Jackson to Cyrus Alexander Baylor for his bravery in action as a colonel in the American army.
By the next Sunday, I had constructed a model made from toothpicks and a match stick, all appropriately painted in gold and black. President McCall approved. Bill Bailey approved. The next step involved yet another Sunday School classmember, Rowe Sams, who agreed to supervise the actual manufacture, the process of turning the model into the reality.
The next morning, Rowe and I met Kent Keeth and Bill Ming in The Texas Collection to examine the canes and sword. One ingredient, however, was still to be found. The three elements had to be mounted on some kind of staff. Ralph Darling, Baylor’s resident engineer, had a suggestion. In the attic of Old Main, lying in disuse after the dismantling of the old towers, were a number of twenty-foot 2×10 timbers of heart pine, lumber used to construct one of the first buildings on the Waco campus following Baylor’s move from Independence.
Armed with a flashlight and a hand saw, Ralph and I spent a hot hour one afternoon, taking turns holding the flashlight and sawing. Baylor students are nearly always polite: trudging out of Old Main and across campus, dirty with cobwebs, sweat and sawdust, carrying a flashlight (in the middle of the afternoon), a saw, and two six-foot pieces of 2×10, we got some strange looks, but nobody said a word.
Rowe Sams put the entire collection of materials in the trunk of his car. He left campus with a toothpick model, two walking canes (one broken in the middle), a sword, and two ragged pieces of timber. He came back with the elegant symbol that became, by action of the Baylor University Board of Trustees in March, 1974, the official Baylor mace.
The finished product contained a delightful surprise. The scale model had depicted a flat Baylor seal at the base. Sams, after inquiries that covered most of the country, had found a company that would manufacture a beautiful three-dimensional reproduction of the official Baylor seal.
There is symbolism in each element of the mace. Sam Houston’s cane, the thicker and slightly longer of the two, symbolizes Baylor’s place in Texas history (the cane is inscribed with the date of 1836) and serves as a reminder that Baylor was founded before Texas joined the Union.
Burleson’s cane, presented to him by his students in 1860, symbolizes Baylor’s beginnings at Independence and emphasizes Baylor’s roots in Texas Baptist tradition. Both Houston and Burleson were members of Independence Baptist Church.
The cross-shaped hilt of the sword symbolizes the ascendency of the Christian faith at Baylor. The sword in toto symbolizes both the heritage and the name handed down to Baylor by her first president and founders.
The staff symbolizes Baylor’s move from Independence to Waco.
The seal symbolizes the continuity of past, present, and future, with special emphasis on the present as Baylor University seeks to continue to make excellence “a tradition, a practice, and a promise.”
The symbolism extends to the Bearer of the Mace, always a retired Baylor faculty member or administrator, who represents the unending effort of each generation to bequeath the best of its tradition to its successors.
Each retired staff member who has honored the university by carrying the mace deserves a detailed description of services rendered through the years. Such description would be sweet music. But for the countless students whose paths have meshed for a little while with the paths of these honored ones, perhaps indeed “heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter.”
Bearers of the Mace
P. D. Browne— May, 1974
Edna Payne Caskey — August, 1974
Martha Barkema — May, 1975
Robert A. Markham — May, 1975
George M. Smith — August, 1975
Lois Smith Strain— May, 1976
Andres R. Sendon — August, 1976
Walter J. Williams— May, 1977
W. R. Stephens— May, 1977
Retha Sanders — August, 1977
Margaret Amsler — May, 1978
Alton B. Lee— May, 1978
Conwell G. Strickland— August, 1978
E. Hudson Long — May, 1979
Leone Cockerell — August, 1979
James W. Dixon Jr. — May, 1980
Floyd F. Davidson — August, 1980
