SCHOOL sits on a cliff high above the Tennessee River. Looking south you see Lookout Mountain in the misty distance as it looms high and humpbacked, seeming to brood on its historic past, the river beneath it, and parts of the city of Chattanooga, which lies at its foot on the other side of the river. In the Cherokee language, the name
Chattanooga
means “to draw fish out of water,” but my brother and I grew up being taught that it meant “the eagle’s nest.”
Looking west you see the Grand Canyon of the Tennessee River, so called because the river cuts a deep gorge between the high wooded plateau of Prentice Cooper State Forest on the south and Signal Mountain on the north. In the distance it turns south and meanders out of sight behind Prentice Cooper and Raccoon Mountain. Storms coming up that gorge are breathtaking spectacles—as are the sunsets.
The Baylor campus is, without doubt, one of the most beautiful academic campuses I have ever seen anywhere. By comparison, the very prestigious Deerfield Academy, which is a few miles from where I live today, looks like a home for the impecunious.
John Roy Baylor founded the school in 1893. It was originally called the University School of Chattanooga and was first located in the urban section of the city, but in 1915 the school moved to its present location overlooking the river. When the United Sates entered World War I in 1917 there was a need for educated young men for the military, and Baylor did its part by becoming an all-male military school. And so it remained until 1971.
TOMMY AND I were Baylor cadets in the 1950s. Just how we, coming from a not-so-well-to-do family who lived in a subaltern section of Chattanooga, were financially able to go to Baylor was a mystery for a long time. Daddy and Mother told us that we had been given football scholarships, which made no sense whatsoever, given that neither of us had ever played football. But Daddy’s close friend Joe Engle, owner of the Joe Engle Bat Company in Chattanooga, was a talent scout for Georgia Tech’s football team. He placed exceptional ball players from all over the South at Baylor for a postgrad year to prep them for Georgia Tech, so we figured that maybe he had pulled a few strings for us.
Neither Tommy nor I knew any better until a few years ago when a former classmate of mine, Sebert Brewer Jr., contacted me. Sebert was a trustee of the Benwood Foundation, a philanthropic organization founded by George Thomas Hunter in 1944 as a perpetual homage to his uncle, Benjamin Thomas, one of the original owners of the Coca-Cola Bottling Company in Chattanooga (where the beverage was first put into bottles in 1899). When George Hunter died in 1950, 70 percent of Coca-Cola Bottling Company stock went to the foundation, just in time to benefit Tommy in 1951 and me in 1952.
Sebert called to tell me that the Benwood Foundation was initiating a fund-raising program and was contacting people who had benefited from it to give testimonials. He asked if I would participate. I did, and was happy to do so. This was the first I knew of the grant, and since it was an anonymous grant, I wonder if Mother and Daddy knew all along. If they did they never told us.
TOMMY WENT TO BAYLOR from 1951 to 1954, seventh to tenth grade. He dropped out after his sophomore year. Being two years older than his classmates was an issue that continued to eat at him, especially when a cadet officer who was younger, or perhaps the same age, dressed him down or called him “son” or “boy.” Tommy
hated
that. His issues with reading still hounded him, though his skills in math were pretty good and would later serve him well as an officer of the Collateral Investment Company in Nashville.
I went to Baylor for six years, graduating in 1958. I’m sure that most people think that spending six years in an all-male military school would be tantamount to spending six years in prison, and in some ways I suppose that is true. Had I been an
Chattanooga
means “to draw fish out of water,” but my brother and I grew up being taught that it meant “the eagle’s nest.”
Looking west you see the Grand Canyon of the Tennessee River, so called because the river cuts a deep gorge between the high wooded plateau of Prentice Cooper State Forest on the south and Signal Mountain on the north. In the distance it turns south and meanders out of sight behind Prentice Cooper and Raccoon Mountain. Storms coming up that gorge are breathtaking spectacles—as are the sunsets.
The Baylor campus is, without doubt, one of the most beautiful academic campuses I have ever seen anywhere. By comparison, the very prestigious Deerfield Academy, which is a few miles from where I live today, looks like a home for the impecunious.
John Roy Baylor founded the school in 1893. It was originally called the University School of Chattanooga and was first located in the urban section of the city, but in 1915 the school moved to its present location overlooking the river. When the United Sates entered World War I in 1917 there was a need for educated young men for the military, and Baylor did its part by becoming an all-male military school. And so it remained until 1971.
TOMMY AND I were Baylor cadets in the 1950s. Just how we, coming from a not-so-well-to-do family who lived in a subaltern section of Chattanooga, were financially able to go to Baylor was a mystery for a long time. Daddy and Mother told us that we had been given football scholarships, which made no sense whatsoever, given that neither of us had ever played football. But Daddy’s close friend Joe Engle, owner of the Joe Engle Bat Company in Chattanooga, was a talent scout for Georgia Tech’s football team. He placed exceptional ball players from all over the South at Baylor for a postgrad year to prep them for Georgia Tech, so we figured that maybe he had pulled a few strings for us.
Neither Tommy nor I knew any better until a few years ago when a former classmate of mine, Sebert Brewer Jr., contacted me. Sebert was a trustee of the Benwood Foundation, a philanthropic organization founded by George Thomas Hunter in 1944 as a perpetual homage to his uncle, Benjamin Thomas, one of the original owners of the Coca-Cola Bottling Company in Chattanooga (where the beverage was first put into bottles in 1899). When George Hunter died in 1950, 70 percent of Coca-Cola Bottling Company stock went to the foundation, just in time to benefit Tommy in 1951 and me in 1952.
Sebert called to tell me that the Benwood Foundation was initiating a fund-raising program and was contacting people who had benefited from it to give testimonials. He asked if I would participate. I did, and was happy to do so. This was the first I knew of the grant, and since it was an anonymous grant, I wonder if Mother and Daddy knew all along. If they did they never told us.
TOMMY WENT TO BAYLOR from 1951 to 1954, seventh to tenth grade. He dropped out after his sophomore year. Being two years older than his classmates was an issue that continued to eat at him, especially when a cadet officer who was younger, or perhaps the same age, dressed him down or called him “son” or “boy.” Tommy
hated
that. His issues with reading still hounded him, though his skills in math were pretty good and would later serve him well as an officer of the Collateral Investment Company in Nashville.
I went to Baylor for six years, graduating in 1958. I’m sure that most people think that spending six years in an all-male military school would be tantamount to spending six years in prison, and in some ways I suppose that is true. Had I been an
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