By Ruth Browning
Contributing writer The Daily Citizen
Monday, August 23, 2004 7:55 PM CDT

Harding University president David Burks stands at one of the old campus entries Monday as a sea of students passes by. Burks is only the fourth president to lead the university in its 80 years of service. Photo / Philip Holsinger.

After 70 years, Harding University seems as firmly rooted in White County as Searcy itself, but the university is actually a transplant.

The uprooting and replanting was quick, sweaty and full of gratitude.

Faculty, staff and students of Harding College in Morrilton moved lock, stock and library in the summer of 1924. School closed in June 1934 in Morrilton.

The college had opened in Morrilton 10 years earlier. Its enrollment had grown each year, and each year the small campus became more crowded. A move was necessary to maintain the school's standing as a senior college.

The college faculty and staff had prayed that God would send them a solution and, when the opportunity came to purchase the old Galloway College campus in Searcy, they were excited.

In the spring of 1934, Harding College announced that it had purchased the Galloway College plant, valued at $500,000, for $75,000 (still a lot of money in those Depression Days). All those faculty members who wished to go to Searcy, along with the student body, were to move during the summer. Harding President J. H. Armstrong referred to the move in the May 29, 1934, issue of the "Searcy Daily Citizen" as preparing for a "new and greater Harding College."

J. J. Baugh, editor of the Searcy Daily Citizen, welcomed Harding College in a front page editorial in the June 27, 1934 issue. He wrote that an injunction suit filed in Morrilton to prevent Harding from moving had been dissolved, "the last obstacle in the way of positive announcement that Harding College would open in the Galloway College plant in Searcy for its next scholastic year's work. The people of Searcy Š feel that the coming of this Christian Institution into our midst is nothing short of a Godsend. Without exception every denomination in this territory opens its arms and receives it and its student body and faculty with wholehearted enthusiasm. It will bring to this community not less than 400 young men and women who have shown that they want the hallowing influences of Christianity as a great part of their education."

The paper for July 4 featured a speech to the Searcy Kiwanis Club by College President J. N. Armstrong, who gave a history of the past 10 years of the college in Morrilton. He said he was impressed with the possibilities of growth with Searcy and Harding College as "partners in a great business."

During the summer, faculty and staff members scurried to find housing (which was more and more difficult to find as the fall semester drew near) and prepare the facility, which had been unused and uncared for since spring 1933, for school in the fall. The months of July and August were extremely hot and several high temperature records were broken.

The temperature on July 25 set a record 110 degrees. With no air conditioning, the work was hot and sweaty. Everyone worked diligently to get the campus ready for college to open on September 26.

Several current Searcy residents were alive in 1934 and took part in some aspect of this move to Searcy.

Fayetta Coleman

Fayetta Coleman was 10 years old when her father loaded up his family and moved from Morrilton to Searcy. Her father had heard from students and faculty traveling to Searcy to move college equipment and look for housing that Searcy was a town with nice paved streets with curbs and a stately courthouse with a square.

Also the new Harding college campus was beautiful with twice as many buildings as were on the Morrilton campus.

Fayetta's parents, the Colemans, had moved to Morrilton with four children under five in 1924 to be at Harding, so moving on to Searcy with the college was a natural progression. Her father's brother and family came from central Missouri to help with the move.

Her father had a broken arm and her mother was eight months pregnant.

On Aug. 8, 1934, the move took place. Fayetta recalls it as "surely the hottest day on record." She rode in the cab of the truck carrying the furniture, along with the truck driver and her 14 year old brother.

The road from Conway to Beebe was dusty gravel and the truck broke down near Vilonia. The repairs would take several hours, but Fayetta was "rescued" by the Pruitt family who were moving from Morrilton to Searcy the same day. They stopped their already loaded Model A Ford and took her up.

Fayette's family moved into a rented house on Market Street. Her father immediately went to work repairing the plumbing and electricity at the college. Galloway College had had a great swimming pool, ready for use within the week. Fayetta thought it was "the most wonderful thing in the world to be able to swim every day the rest of the summer."

She began the 1934-35 school year in the Harding Academy Training School, a red brick building running north and south in the general area where Kendall Hall is today.

Her father was employed doing maintenance on campus and her mother taught in the speech department. Fayetta graduated from Harding College without ever having attended anywhere else, having started in the training school at Morrilton in grade one.

Today, Fayetteta Coleman is Mrs. Malcolm Murray and lives in Searcy.

Ruby Davis

Ruby Davis was one of eight children born on a farm near Plainview to Andrew Jackson Davis. She graduated in the spring of 1934, salutatorian of her class at Plainview Consolidated High School, the first consolidated school in White County.

"I didn't expect to get to go to college. It was depression years," she said.

One day Professor S. R. Bell from Harding College came to Plainview community looking for good students to attend Harding, which was moving from Morrilton that summer.

When Mr. Bell asked if Ruby could enter Harding, her father answered, "I don't have any money to send this child to college." Bell said, "We have work she can do and we need workers."

This sounded good to Ruby's father.

Mr. Davis had a good pick-up truck, so Ruby and a neighbor's daughter, Wanda Yingling, were brought to Searcy to the old Galloway school, now preparing to become Harding College.

They stayed in Patti Cobb dormitory and worked all summer, from June to August, cleaning the college, which, according to Ruby, was very dirty because Galloway had been closed for awhile.

Ruby Lowery (later Stapleton) was supervisor and also prepared the meals. Wanda and Ruby's families brought produce from the farm and the boys bought other items needed. Lowery would cook and everyone helped clean up.

The young people didn't work all the time. On Wednesday evenings they would walk to the Downtown Church of Christ (which was located on the corner of Vine and Locust then). Softball was the ball game everyone liked to play and they would go as a group to the games. Lowery was a good pianist and the workers would gather round and entertain themselves with songs. Ruby was able to begin college in the fall.

She is now Mrs. James Williams and she lives in Searcy.

Myrtle Rowe

Myrtle Rowe, born in 1896, had only been married to her husband a few years when he drafted into service in World War I. He died while still in service during the influenza epidemic, leaving Myrtle pregnant.

After her son Don was born, Mrs. Rowe went to Morrilton to work on her degree and teach some classes. She had finished her degree and was teaching full time when word came that Harding College had bought the vacant Galloway College in Searcy.

When school closed in Morrilton in June, everyone began getting ready to travel to Searcy. Rowe didn't try to take much (she said she didn't have much) but sold or threw it away. She loaded up a small two-wheel trailer and she and Don headed, along with many others, for Searcy.

They stayed at Patti Cobb dorm for the summer. Rowe's book "Silhouettes of Life" tells her story.

"It was truly a hard summer, for the plant had been vacant Š and it took a lot of work to get it in readiness for occupancy. All hands, from the president and dean down to all our children, had a job to do putting things in order and getting ready for opening of school in September. Sometimes it looked like an impossible task; but everyone knew how to do some portion of work, and teaming together was what it would take.

"Harding had that team-work spirit. It would been interesting to a complete stranger to observe all those who were able to swing mops, brooms, and paint brushes, the waxers, window washers, and lawn mowers, then to learn that their rank ranged from Ph.D professors down to high school students laboring feverishly side by sideŠ. The property had been vacant for so long that everything was covered with layer on top of layer of dirt; and spiders had their intricate art work swinging wherever one looked."

Rowe's book describes how the boys and men went up to the attic in Godden Hall and found beautiful pieces of furniture, antique chairs, chests, mirrors, an organ, bedroom water sets, and even some decorative wall panels.

These treasures were brought down and carefully repaired and refinished for use in some part of the college.

Dean L. C. Sears was quoted in the Sept. 24 issue of The Citizen predicting the possibility of a record enrollment of 500 students for the fall semester. Students from 21 states were already enrolled.

Sears said, "Harding College confers both the Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Science degree." Also, he said, "Šthe Education Department offers a course which will fit its graduates to pass (the exams) given by the state Board of Education."

The Sept. 27 issue of The Citizen" carried major front page coverage of the formal opening of the college. More than 100 Searcy businessmen, city officials and churches bought space in a two-page ad in the "Citizen" which appeared this day. The ad welcomed the college and extended best wishes for Harding College to be "happy and prosperous in your new home."

Note: Harding University's Library has the summer of 1934 newspaper on microfilm.