The Baylor Line

It’s no secret that George W. Truett lived an extraordinary life. However, one of his most incredible accomplishments came before he earned his Baylor degree.

In square five of a comic strip published in the Baptist Standard in 1956, readers are reminded of how Truett saved Baylor from financial catastrophe.

Having recently moved from Independence to Waco, the University was bearing $93,000 in debt. During a meeting of the Texas Baptists in 1889 in Waxahachie, Waco pastor Dr. B. H. Carroll was tasked with finding a financial agent for Baylor. The name of a young man was presented to him as a potential candidate: George Truett.

Truett was planning to study law but had recently changed courses and accepted a call to ministry. After meeting with Caroll about the opportunity, Truett met with the board of trustees, who were hesitant about whether or not he would rise to the occasion.

But Truett saw the heart behind campaigning and fundraising and was determined to do things the right way. During previous fundraising campaigns, many Texans had given promissory notes to Baylor but never paid them. Truett insisted the right thing to do was to return those notes rather than make people pay.

“We can get along at Baylor without their money, perhaps, but not without their friendship,” he said. “People are the important thing. Win the people, and they will willingly give the money.”

His attitude made all the difference, and people started providing an abundance of cash contributions. At one point, Truett himself quietly slipped $500 into the collection – all the money he had been saving up for his college tuition.

In the 23rd month of the campaign, Truett was still $800 short of his total goal. But, last-minute donations — including a very generous donation from an ill man whom Truett met with personally — brought the University to its fundraising goal.

The Baptists of Texas were thrilled, and that very next fall, Truett entered Baylor as a freshman and a hero.

World War 1 prompted a steady disappearance of Baylor men from campus as they left to support the war effort. But the sudden emptiness of campus didn't stop those left behind from finding creative ways to support their classmates from afar. A frenzy of activity erupted as students joined together to keep Baylor running.

The editors of The Round Up launched a campaign to collect tinfoil, which could be donated and reused for military purposes. Donation boxes appeared around campus that were quickly filled with foil candy wrappers.

Following a national government appeal for Americans to observe one wheatless day each week, students living on campus passed a resolution petitioning the dining hall to stop using wheat flour – giving up little luxuries for the sake of a greater cause.

A group of girls organized a Red Cross chapter at Baylor, and 225 Baylor women became auxiliary members. They helped stitch bandages, knit, and complete other home-front war work.

When a half-dozen Baylor Press employees were called away from campus, women across campus stepped into their roles and kept the publication running, helping to fold and stitch pages. In fact, they were probably some of the first women in the area to take the place of men who had left for the war in industrial occupations.

While academics and studies might have gone somewhat neglected that year, the impact those students made and the real-world things they learned went far beyond what any book could have ever taught them.