Change of Address

It would have been a big day for any college. It was even more of an occasion for a college without a classroom or dormitory in sight. Baptist Harry Truman was there (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS). So were President Gordon Gray of the University of North Carolina and thousands of other notables who had come to "Reynolda," just outside of Winston-Salem, for the ceremony. At the ripe old age of 117, Baptist Wake Forest College (enrollment: 1703) was breaking ground on its brand new campus--110 miles from its old one near Raleigh, N.C.

The college first decided to walk 110 miles for a Camel five years ago, when the Zachary Smith Reynolds Foundation began pouring some of its Camel millions into education (TIME, April 22, 1946). The foundation offered the college the income from a $12,000,000 trust fund if it would move to industrial Winston-Salem. Then Charles Babcock, a Reynolds inlaw, offered a 350-acre site. Wake Forest took one look at its own puny campus (25 acres), decided to accept, and set out to raise the money on its own to build a whole new college from scratch.

Some Baptists and alumni protested hotly that the college was getting smeared with tobacco stains. They warned that if Wake Forest took the money, it might "lose its soul," might even find its name changed to Camel University.* But President Harold Tribble, a Baptist theologian from Charlottesville, paid no heed to the skeptics. He argued and begged at alumni banquets, civic meetings and Baptist groups. He pointed out again & again that the Reynolds Foundation had no intention of trying to run the college or change its name. Finally, half the necessary $15 million was in.

Wake Forest hired a Manhattan architect to plan a new campus down to the last magnolia tree, sold its old one to the Southern Baptist Convention. The architect drew plans for a new chapel, university center, library, science building, gymnasium, four dormitories for men and two for women. The college will add other buildings later.

Wake Forest's first-rate medical school is already in Winston-Salem. Its law school now ranks with Duke and Chapel Hill. By the time the new campus opens, in the fall of 1954, Wake Forest College hopes to change its name to "Wake Forest University."

*A fate which had already overtaken little Trinity College in 1924 when it accepted $6,000,000 of tobacco money and became Duke University. A story of the time has it that one amused onlooker suggested an appropriate compromise: "The Father, Son and J. B. Duke University."

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