Opinion Columnists
Email
Print
Giants: Hearn found solid groundwork and built on it
ADVERTISEMENT
Published: August 24, 2008
Tom Hearn well deserves the accolades that have been heaped on him since he died Monday after a valiant battle against brain cancer, as well as all the praise he received after he stepped down as the president of Wake Forest University three years ago. His tenure as Wake Forest's 12th president is impressive not just for its longevity -- how can anyone last 22 years as a major university president these days? -- but also for its accomplishments.
You might look at his term as president as one chapter -- one long, solid chapter -- in the school's 174-year-long history.
Wake Forest changed a great deal during the Hearn years, and much of that change was for the better. When Hearn arrived in Winston-Salem in 1983, many people outside of Atlantic Coast Conference territory still got "Wake Forest" mixed up with "Lake Forest College" in Illinois. Today, Wake Forest is well known and respected nationally, thanks to such factors as prestigious magazine rankings, high-profile sports teams, two presidential debates, innovative approaches to education, smart management and good marketing.
Such quantifiable advancements as the expanded faculty, the larger endowment, the new buildings and new programs have been widely reported. So have other changes that prompt less celebration, including soaring tuition and fees.
Hearn's greatest accomplishment may be in an area that doesn't show up as readily in rankings or even in the college's marketing materials: Through personal and institutional involvement, he made Wake Forest much more of a player -- and a force for progress -- in Winston-Salem than it had been. When he took over, Wake Forest had been in Winston-Salem for a little more than a quarter of a century, and town and gown still regarded each other a little uneasily. Hearn plunged right in as a leader in civic life and economic development. That role proved essential to the city as traditional economic and leadership models changed dramatically.
An argument could be made that if someone other than Tom Hearn had been chosen to take over at Wake Forest, the story of the university's importance to the community might be different. That may or may not be true.
I have, however, been a little disturbed amid all the retrospectives by accounts that seem to suggest that Wake Forest barely existed before Hearn's arrival. They sound almost as though Hearn found a sleepy liberal-arts college, struck upon the idea of changing it into a nationally recognized university, and then executed that idea.
To say that the groundwork for Wake Forest's emergence as a national power, including the necessary break from the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina, had been laid before Hearn became president is not to downplay his accomplishments. Rather, it is to recognize that his was one chapter in a long story, a story that precedes Hearn and continues beyond him, in the administration of Nathan Hatch, and in those yet to come.
Maybe my stopping to think about what preceded Hearn's tenure is nostalgia, a function of age. After all, I was a student at Wake Forest during the 1960s under two earlier presidents -- two years under Harold W. Tribble and two under James Ralph Scales. I was a student at Wake Forest College for two years, but my degree says "Wake Forest University." That change in name, reflecting reality, was made in 1967, just before Scales took office, and 16 years before Hearn arrived. Alumni from my era and before may get a little prickly at implications that our version of the alma mater was Podunk.
I prefer to think that I've been reflecting on the continuum of history, something that Americans probably don't do often enough.
Back in the '60s, when the Winston-Salem campus was so new that the trees were small and sidewalks were still being added, we students got ample reminders of what had gone before. There were many people among the faculty and administration who had been students or faculty or both on the old campus in Wake County. They considered it part of their duty to let us know that even as Wake Forest was poised to make great strides forward, its modern leaders were standing on the shoulders of giants.
They told us, for example, about the strengths in Wake Forest's character that came from its Baptist heritage, about strong values, independent thinking and a sometimes rowdy nature. We learned about President William Louis Poteat, Wake Forest's seventh president, who served 22 years. An active Baptist, Poteat was also a scientist, and he defended the teaching of evolution and helped defeat a bill in the state legislature that would have prohibited its teaching in the public schools.
With the callowness of youth, those of us who were students in the waning days of President Tribble's tenure probably did not fully appreciate him. Looking back, I see him as perhaps the president who made the most profound impact on Wake Forest. He had the vision of a small college becoming a university with a great future. Amid controversy and despite vociferous opposition, he picked that college up and moved it to Winston-Salem in 1956, setting it on the pathway to prosperity and progress.
Scales, taking over just after Wake Forest became a university, built on that promise. His greatest accomplishment may have been taking another strong blow for academic freedom: He refused to let the Baptists tell him that Wake Forest could not accept a grant from the National Science Foundation to build a greenhouse. His stand was widely praised, and part of the fallout was a more relaxed relationship with the state convention, which paved the way for the eventual break negotiated by Hearn.
Tom Hearn's chapter in the story of Wake Forest is an impressive one. It's No. 12. Keep reading.
• Linda Brinson is the Journal's editorial-page editor. She can be reached at lbrinson@wsjournal.com .
Email
Print
ADVERTISEMENT
N.C. Politics
Federal Politics
See community events or add your own! Click here!
Advertisement
