John Shearer: Plenty Of Reminiscing At Recent Reunion For Former Baylor Girl Boarders

Since the 1989-90 school year, hundreds of girls have left their homes in different communities in the South and elsewhere to become part of the first generation of female boarding students at Baylor School.

During a recent reunion of some of these women at the school, it quickly became obvious that Baylor along the way became like home, too.

“It’s good to be back,” said Julia Fishel, who graduated in 2003. “It almost feels like coming home.”

Added 1998 graduate Mallie Mitchell Whatley of Birmingham as she toured the recently renovated Lowrance Hall, “Even though there are a lot of changes that have been made, a lot of it is the same.

It’s kind of a weird sensation to be back in here. It’s fun, especially not living in Chattanooga and not getting to see it.”

In connection with roughly the 25th anniversary of the girls’ boarding program and because former women’s dorm Trustee Hall is scheduled to be torn down, a small number of former boarding girls gathered at the school.

The fellowship time and building tours over Alumni Weekend in early October offered the women a chance to say hello again to the dorms and each other. But it also offered an opportunity to say goodbye to Trustee Hall, which will be replaced by an academic building, although an exact timetable has not been determined. 

Ms. Fishel, who lived in Trustee during her two years at Baylor from 2001-03, definitely wanted to say so long to her old brick-and-mortar friend. “That was my home for two years. It was sad to hear, but I understand,” she said of the building that opened in 1935 as an academic and boys dorm building and was designed by the noted Atlanta architectural firm of Pringle and Smith.

Trustee Hall, which sits at the north end of the quadrangle on top of the Baylor hill and served as a girls dorm from 1995-2003 and 2007-11, has been one of several dorms for girls over the recent decades.

The first was Lowrance Hall, which opened on the site of the former infirmary in the fall of 1989. It was named in honor of Mrs. Frances Acree Lowrance. She was the mother of 1934 graduate Dr. Preston B. Lowrance as well as two daughters, Bess, who married longtime Baylor basketball coach Robert W. Hill, and Ruth, who married Chattanooga industrialist and Baylor benefactor Gordon Street Sr.

Lowrance was actually not the first building on that part of Baylor hill to be a dorm, as the infirmary once had small dorm space nicknamed “the Cave” in its basement for a period.

Beginning in the fall of 1990, Hunter Hall became the second girls dorm when the third floor of the building, part of which dates to 1917, was converted into a girls dorm.

After Trustee later followed Hunter in being used for girls, Riverfront Hall above the Tennessee River opened in 2003 as another girls dorm, and Trustee ceased housing girls for four years.

Although Baylor had begun admitting girls again for the first time in decades in 1985, approximately four years of planning and construction were required before the first girl boarders could be admitted.

Then-Baylor admissions office employee Frances Williamson said in a 1989 interview with a Chattanooga newspaper a few weeks before construction on Lowrance was completed that the move was a culmination of Baylor’s vision.

“I think to have a fully coeducational environment, you have to have girl boarders,” she said, adding that the school had received 300 inquiries for 39 spots.

One boarder who was among the first in 1989 was Lesli Jacobs, a day student from McMinnville, Tenn., who was going to be a senior proctor.

Over the years, the addition of girl boarders became a rich experience for both the residents and the school as a whole, those who attended the reunion said. And although technology has changed since some of them were students, the experience of girls being girls has remained the same.

Betsy Sanger Morris, who came as a freshman from Hickman, Ky., in the fall of 1995 and spent four years living in Lowrance Hall, has some fun and funny memories of trying to talk on the phone.

“The oldest memories are of when I was a freshman,” she said. “That was before cell phones and we had the little phone booths. Every hall had two phone booths, and just being 14 years old and getting on the pay phone and calling home was important.

But she ended up having to call for help as well from the booth due to pranks from the older hall residents.

“They would try to lock you in the phone booth,” she recalled with a laugh. “They were always trying to think of funny ways to play practical jokes on the freshmen. They would also put a trashcan full of water against your door, and you would open the door and it all spilled in there.”

She also remembered that parents would often call the pay phone numbers looking for their daughters, since cell phones were not overly common then except in the business community and the rooms did not have individual land lines.             

But most of her memories of being in Lowrance are of warm times, the Vanderbilt alumna and Nashville mother of small daughters added. And visiting this fall made her feel as though she had simply stepped back in time, she added.

“It doesn’t look that much different to me,” she said. “The paint colors and the fabrics on the chairs are different, but it sill brings back a lot of good memories. I could just see myself sitting in the TV room and watching Tennessee win the national championship (in early 1999).”

Ms. Whatley had roomed in Lowrance during her sophomore year in 1995-96 before spending her last two years in Trustee Hall, an experience that was much different from being in Lowrance, she said.

“It was totally different because it was so small,” said the University of Virginia alumna, who, like Ms. Morris, spends much of her time these days raising young daughters. “There were only 12 of us in there and we were all friends, which was fun. It kind of felt like a mini-sorority house.”

Ms. Fishel, who lives in her former hometown of Aiken, S.C., near Augusta and does hazards and consequences analysis at the Savannah River Site for a consulting company, also liked the small sense of community found at Trustee.

“We were a tight-knit little group. We did everything together,” the Clemson University alumna said, adding that October’s visit was only her third time back on campus since graduating.

The dorms also had a number of faculty and staff residents over the years, including Nancy Wallace Johnson, who lived in Lowrance from 1990-95 and attended the reunion.

Although she experienced the girls’ dorm program from the perspective of an adult, the memories are no less warm and sentimental. She recalled that Lowrance, while considered the premier dorm for girls during the early years, was set off and was less in the middle of the campus goings-on than Hunter.

But it had plenty of excitement taking place within the building. She recalled such times as when 50 residents and friends would be in the Lowrance lobby at one time, and when male students would be afraid to give their dates a goodnight kiss in front of so many people. She also remembered when the power went out and everyone gathered in the lobby with candles, and when the girls one time cranked up some music outside and ran in just as residential life director Ray Deering came to see the nature of the disturbance.

“It was like a slumber party every night,” she joked.

Mercedes Akers was the first staff head of Lowrance, Ms. Johnson recalled, and among the other early faculty residents were current McCallie football coach Ralph and Jennifer Potter and Frances Williamson. Ms. Williamson was a 1979 Girls Preparatory School May queen who would go on to marry Dr. Jack McCallie, a descendant of the family who founded McCallie School.

Ms. Johnson remembers that Ms. McCallie before she was married became locked out of her Lowrance apartment while on her patio. “She had to sit on her back porch and yell at everybody who went by, but it was toward the river,” she said. “The girls really gave her a hard time.”

And coach Potter’s wife had their first child while they were in Lowrance, Ms. Johnson recalled.

“The night she went into labor, all the girls formed a Tiger Walk (similar to what the fans do for the Baylor football team) and let her go through her own Tiger Walk to go to the hospital to have her boy.”

Ms. Johnson – who also helped the late King Oehmig’s Baylor golf team and later worked in the alumni office -- also had her own life-changing moments while in Lowrance. That came when she met and married her husband, Howard Johnson of the Baylor physical plant staff.

“My eight advisees who were my boarding students were my junior bridesmaids,” she said with a proud smile.

And many of the other boarding girls felt like family, too, she added.

“We had a lot of good girls to go through here,” she said. “There were some wonderful times.”

Jcshearer2@comcast.net