Wofford College - From The Archives

Dean Covington

Can anything good come out of Moultrie?

If you know anything about Dean Philip Stanhope Sheffield Covington, you don’t have to ask. 

Born in Moultrie, Georgia, Philip Covington graduated from Emory University in 1934 and embarked upon the study of law.  He practiced law for three years in Georgia before deciding to pursue teaching and graduate study in English.  After he earned a master’s degree in English at Duke University, he taught in Florida and in Charleston, SC before becoming associate professor of English at Wofford in 1947. 

Three years later, he took on the thankless job of dean of students, and in 1953, new president Pendleton Gaines named him dean of the college.  When President Gaines resigned abruptly in 1957, the trustees turned to Dean Covington, naming him acting president until they could bring Dr. Charles Marsh to campus in 1958.  As chief academic officer from 1953 to 1969, Phil Covington hired a generation of faculty members, all of whom are now retired.  He had a particular knack for picking professors, and most famously, hired geologist John Harrington after sitting next to him on an airplane. 

Phil Covington was more than an administrator and teacher, he was a lover of tradition, skillful in the use of words, and by all accounts, a clever and engaging member of the community.  Though he respected tradition and later in life said he wanted nothing about Wofford to change, he could poke fun at tradition and never took himself or his office too seriously.  The stories of him are numerous and humorous, and according to Dr. Lewis Jones “not more than a third of them are apocryphal.”  One of my favorites is the oft-repeated tale of how he was asked how he determined faculty salaries, and after staring out the window for a moment, he replied that he observed the flights of birds.  Another favorite is the story about low enrollment in one particular department – he was overheard to say, as he looked out his office window, “I wonder what Dan Olds and his physics student are doing today.”   Most of those stories, unfortunately, were never written down. 

He created a few euphemisms that remain with us today.  “The Wofford Way” is attributed to him.  He meant it not entirely as a compliment.  He meant it in sort of an English way of “muddling through.”  His founder’s day addresses were the stuff of legend.  He once gave a talk about Benjamin Wofford’s bones.  A Shakespearean scholar, naturally he chose Mark Antony’s funeral oration in Julius Caesar as his text.  (Keep an eye out, in a few weeks I’ll post the talk on Founder’s Day this year.)  Despite poking fun at Old Ben every now and then, he had a great respect for the college’s founder, saying that his “very action in founding this college was a profession of faith in the eternal verities.” 

At Dean Covington’s funeral in 1988, Dr. Lewis Jones quoted a 1951 Old Gold and Black story that began, “’On November 28, 1912, the population of Moultrie, Georgia was increased, for better or worse, by one.’  We know now—it was for better.”

If you have a Covington story or quote, why not share it with me?  Leave a comment about Dean Covington so others can enjoy.

The Faculty, the late 1860s version

One of the rituals surrounding the start of each academic year is opening convocation.  For a good number of years, this has been a full-dress convocation, with faculty, librarians, and administrators processing in academic regalia.  

One of the rituals that we have observed in more years than not is the annual photo on the steps of Main Building.  The tradition of taking a photo of the faculty is a fairly old one.  Below, I'm sharing the oldest faculty photo in our collection.  

Pictured, from left to right: Whitefoord Smith, professor of English, 1855-93; James H. Carlisle, professor of mathematics, 1854-1875 and president of the college, 1875-1902; David Duncan, professor of ancient languages, 1854-1881; A. H. Lester, professor of history and Biblical literature, 1866-1873; Warren DuPre, professor of natural science, 1854-1875; and A. M. Shipp, president of the college and professor of mental and moral philosophy, 1859-1875.  Click on the photo for a larger version in a pop-up window.)  This group served together for an extended period of time; in fact, with the exception of Lester, they were together from 1859 to 1875.  Three of them were elected to the original faculty.  

The modern faculty is considerably larger and more diverse than this group, with 118 full-time professors teaching at the college this fall.  

Bishop A. Coke Smith

There’s a story, and I can’t find the citation this morning, that a man had moved from Columbia to Spartanburg in the late 19^th century, but was shortly thereafter seen on the streets of Columbia.  When a friend inquired why he was back in the capital city, the man replied that to live in Spartanburg, one had to accept three things as fact, that Wofford College was the greatest  educational institution since Oxford, that Dr. James Carlisle, Wofford’s president, was the greatest astronomer since Copernicus, and that Wofford professor Coke Smith was the greatest pulpit orator since Saint Paul.  And he’d be darned if he could accept them all! 

Alexander Coke Smith may not have been the greatest pulpit orator since Paul, but he must have been pretty good, because within two years of his graduation from Wofford, he had been assigned to Washington Street Methodist Church in Columbia, which, despite its encounter with fire in 1865, was arguably the most important Methodist pulpit in the most important city in the Conference. 

Born in Lynchburg, in Sumter County, in 1849, Coke Smith was the son of The Rev. William H. Smith, a member of the South Carolina Annual Conference.  He studied at Wofford from 1868 to 1872, and after his graduation, he taught in the Reidville, SC high school for a term.  He joined the South Carolina Conference in December 1872 and was appointed to the church in Cheraw.  The next year, he was sent to Washington Street Church in Columbia, where he served for three years.  This was quite a leap for someone who was so new in the ministry, for Washington Street was (and remains) a large and influential congregation.  At the end of 1876, he was sent to Greenville, where he served Buncombe Street Church for four years.  He then went to Trinity in Charleston, serving for three years, and at that point, he was made the presiding elder for the Columbia District.  Before he had passed his 32^nd birthday, he had been appointed to large churches in three of the state’s largest cities, and had met with success in each appointment. 

In 1884, he was named to fill a vacancy on Wofford’s board of trustees, and in 1886, when Wofford professor William Wallace Duncan was elected a bishop, Smith was elected to fill his chair on the Wofford faculty.  At the same time, the trustees voted to relieve Smith of the teaching obligations that came with being Professor of Mental and Moral Philosophy, the chair to which he had just been named, so that he might work on behalf of the college in the churches around the state.  By the 1880s, it had become common for one of the faculty members to act as financial agent of the college, serving essentially as the college’s development officer.  W. W. Duncan did this, as did Coke Smith, and later, John C. Kilgo.  All three were effective in raising funds and promoting the college to Methodists in the state, and each man used his position to launch himself to an even higher position in the church hierarchy.  Smith also served as the college’s treasurer, handling much of the institution’s business. 

After four years at Wofford, Smith was elected one of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South’s missionary secretaries by the General Conference.  He left that position quickly to take a professorship  of practical theology at Vanderbilt’s divinity school.  After two years, he moved back into the local church, but this time, in Virginia.  He served in the Old Dominion until his election as a bishop in 1902.  He actually came close to being elected in 1898, and in 1891 and 1901, he had attended the great ecumenical conferences.  It's unfortunate that his time in the episcopacy was actually quite short, for he died in Asheville, NC in December 1906.  

A March Madness tribute?

This cartoon has been sitting on my desk for several months, ever since I wrote a Wofford Today column on Dr. C. C. Norton, Wofford's longtime dean of the college and professor of sociology.  Dr. Norton was best known for his annual presentation of A Christmas Carol, but he was also known as a caricaturist and cartoonist in the South Carolina Methodist Advocate.  In the Norton Papers here in the archives, we have a collection of his cartoons and caricatures.  One of his cartoon series, Church Folks, looked at life in the South Carolina church of the mid 20th century.  

Here's one of my favorites of the cartoon panels.  Though the young fellow is wearing a helmet and carrying a football, I think the sentiment works just as well for March Madness. 

Financial Hard Times from 1893

It's going to start looking like I get new papers, photographs, documents, and other goodies in the mail every week.  Would that it were true!  This makes two weeks in a row that something arrived on my desk that I immediately thought was worth sharing with a wider audience.  

Considering what's going on in our country these days; hard times, unemployment, financial woes, this letter reminds us that these things have happened before.  In the 19th and early 20th centuries, "panics" occurred every so often, usually a result of some economic bubble finally bursting, as bubbles always do.  One of these panics occurred in 1893.  This letter from President James H. Carlisle makes some reference both to the panic and to federal efforts to bail the country out of it.  

(Click on the image for a pop-up version)

Roughly, the letter from Dr. Carlisle to H. Z. Nabers, of the class of 1893, says 

"Spartanburg, SC, February 9, 1893

"You must not let the hard times and slow-paying patrons depres you unduly.  When our Secretary at Washington borrows his fifty millions, some of it will come to you in due time.  Be economical, prudent, & hopeful.  As to what is due me, let it stand until you can meet it.  

"We are moving on as usual with some of the currents and casualties of college life.  I write hurriedly.  Very truly yours, James H. Carlisle"

Mr. Nabors was an 1893 graduate, though it's not clear if he has already finished college or if he's taking a term away from campus.  He must owe Dr. Carlisle or the college some money, perhaps as a tuition payment.  We can only guess.  He may already be in business for himself, as the letter suggests he's having trouble collecting his accounts.  

In any event, Smith Patterson of our development office brought this and several other items to me today from Mr. Zach Nabers, a 1967 Wofford graduate who lives in Greenville  We're always glad to have items like this that tell us more about life in long ago times.  

"Knotty" Rembert

I'm not quite sure why they called him "Knotty."  

Of all the reasons I've read, the one I like best, the one that sort of goes to the heart of teaching and mentoring, is that Dr. Rembert was always asking questions that were difficult to answer, posing problems that made students think.  Or perhaps it was because he worked his students hard.  One story is that he kept after one student to take one of his Greek courses for the better part of a year, and finally the student responded, "Doctor, I'd like to take that course, but I want a little little time to play tennis."  

Students being students, the nickname probably had something to do with his looks.  By all accounts, he was a skinny fellow with a thin neck and wild hair that went in all directions.  Maybe he had big, knotty hands.  Perhaps he had some unusual habits as well.  Students liked to repeat the stories they had heard of Rembert's student days - that he would stay out late, come home, put his feet in hot water, and read Greek until the wee hours.  Not exactly typical of a Wofford student of any day.  Descriptions of him as the rumpled professor abound, and he could be seen walking to and from his home on North Church Street twice daily, coat flapping, arms swinging, and his mind no doubt consumed with some topic on which he was planning to engage his classes.  

Arthur Gaillard Rembert was born in Charleston in the last months before South Carolina seceded from the Union, and grew up in the port city.  He came to Wofford in 1880 and graduated in 1884, winning distinctions in his work.  He took a master's degree from Wofford the next year.  After teaching elsewhere for a year, he returned to campus in 1887 to serve as the headmaster for the Wofford Fitting School, the preparatory school that the college used to operate.  He continued in this capacity for eight years, then moved to the college faculty as professor of Greek.  He also taught Bible and psychology during his thirty-eight years on the faculty.  

Were this his complete biography, forty years of service to Wofford, that might be impressive enough.  However, Rembert was one of two Wofford faculty members - Henry Nelson Snyder was the other - who attended the meeting where the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools - SACS - was founded.  Rembert helped set the standard for membership in SACS higher than Wofford could then attain - and he knew full well that the Fitting School that he had been running for the previous eight years was one of the things that would keep Wofford out of SACS until the 1920s.  He also continued to undertake graduate work in the summers, usually at the University of Chicago.  

Students held him in high regard.  In faculty meetings, when questions of student discipline came up, he always took the side of the student.  That's not to say he was a pushover, for as some students noted, he always asked the question when you weren't paying attention, always caught you when you weren't thinking.  He was always thinking, the students said.  When students started coming late to his class, he solved the problem by quizzing the last arrival thoroughly on the day's assignments.  Students scrambled not to be the last to arrive.  He took over Dr. Carlisle's "Students Class" in the Central Methodist Sunday School, which ended up meeting in the sanctuary because of its size.  He taught Wofford men and Converse women in that class.  

When he died in 1933, tributes from colleagues and students alike poured in.  Dr. Snyder, who had known him virtually all their professional lives, wrote, "The classroom was his kingdom, and the teacher's desk his throne.  It is to be doubted whether he really had any other ambition than that of being simply a teacher of men."  He continued, "He was not only a great teacher but a great educator as well, that is, he taught more than his subject and the mastery of it.  All over South Carolina there are men who may not remember a great deal out of the books Dr. Rembert taught but they will never forget that they learned much of how to live more richly and more nobly because he awoke in them the forces that give worth and dignity to human character."

And isn't that what we hope for from our teachers.  

Photos: The young Rembert, Rembert in 1915, the year the students dedicated the Bohemian to him.  

"Amazing" DuPre

Maybe students still have nicknames for professors and administrators.  If they do, then I'm pretty sure the professors and administrators don't want to know what those are.  In years past, faculty collected nicknames, flattering and otherwise, from students, and they seemed to stick through several different generations of students.  Sometimes the nickname had something to do with the professor's first or last name ("Dunc" for David Duncan Wallace, "Clink" for John G. Clinkscales, or even "Fish" for John L. Salmon) and sometimes it involved certain attributes ("Peg" for E. H. Shuler, who taught surveying and was prone to leaving survey markers around campus, or "Graveyard" for James A. Chiles, who was known to be a tough German professor.)  The dean during the 1920s and 1930s collected a few nicknames himself.  

Arthur Mason DuPre, who came to Wofford as a student in the 1890s from Abbeville County, graduated in 1895 and immediately went to work teaching in the old Wofford Fitting School.  He became headmaster of the fitting school, which was designed to prepare students for admission to Wofford's freshman class, in 1897 and retained that position until 1912.  He also taught Latin and mathematics.  One of his students at the Fitting School remembered plaing a game of basketball in full view of North Church Street with his shirt-tail out.  Suddenly he saw Dean DuPre, who was sitting on his front porch, put down his newspaper and make a beeline for the game.  The student realized when DuPre was about halfway there that he was probably coming to tell him to tuck his shirt in, and quickly did so.  DuPre kept coming, letting the student know that such conduct was improper and that in such a public place, Wofford students must be above reproach.  

He moved to teaching in the college in 1912, and in 1920 became the college's first dean.  Today, we think of "the dean" as the chief academic officer, but Dean DuPre's office was a strange mixture of student and academic affairs.  Essentially, he handled all student discipline, whether it came from an academic or a social problem.  College historian David Duncan Wallace later noted that he was "strict in his system of discipline, but rigorously fair.  He enjoyed an almost unprecedented popularity with the students, which would have been impossible but for the recognition that he ... was absolutely fair."  Shortly after becoming dean in 1920, DuPre spent a year as acting president, as Dr. Henry Nelson Snyder was granted leave to take part in a church-wide Methodist Educational Campaign to raise funds for Methodist-related colleges in the South.  He continued to serve as dean until 1940, when he returned to the classroom.  Ultimately, he worked at the college for 52 years.  

DuPre and Snyder, along with the college's long-serving treasurer, marked a shift from the days when the faculty took on administrative tasks in addition to teaching, to a time when individuals took on administrative tasks as a central part of their job, and taught less than a full load.  Still, having 3 or 4 people to handle all of the college's administrative tasks, and to keep tabs on 400 students, was no small undertaking.  

DuPre continued to teach a variety of subjects, was active in Central Methodist Church, and was even a member of the University Senate of the Methodist Church in 1941.  His successor in office, Dean David Wood, is a member of the University Senate today.  

There are more stories about "Old Mace," "Amazing DuPre," or "The Dean" than can be recounted in this space.  One student allegedly claimed that DuPre looked more like a Roman senator than anybody he ever knew (How the student knew what a Roman senator looked like is worth asking, though maybe DuPre taught him enough Latin that he figured it out?)  He was very much one of those characters that made Wofford unique.  

On the cover of the June 10, 1937 issue of the SC Methodist Advocate is this quote from DuPre that illustrates much of his, and the college's philosophy:  Remember that education makes us masters of conditions but servants of men.  Take this view and you understand something of the Wofford spirit.  You are not educated.  You have been, still are, and will always be, in the process of being educated.  Education is only a process.  At every step. at every goal reached, there comes not only the opportunty for, but also the call to, service.  To illuminate somewhat the dark places, to get under burdens here and there, to do your part in straight thinking, to so walk in the right way that others will be inclined to follow -- That is the opportunity ahead.  

James A. Chiles: Teacher and Scholar

When James A. Chiles came to Wofford in 1914, he joined a faculty of thirteen professors. He became part of a core group of faculty members who, with only a few changes, taught together for a generation. Seven of these thirteen professors, Chiles included, retired together in 1947. Through difficult economic days all of these professors were devoted to the college, to their students, and to teaching. All of them influenced their students’ lives, but a handful of the faculty members distinguished themselves off campus as well. Upon joining the faculty, Chiles was one of only four Wofford professors to hold an earned doctorate. (The others were David Duncan Wallace in history, Coleman B. Waller in chemistry, and William L. Pugh in English.) Chiles was a noted scholar of the German language, the founder of a national German honorary fraternity, and had influence that extended well beyond the city’s northern border. 

Born in Missouri in 1877, James Alburn Chiles graduated from Central College in Fayette, Missouri in 1895. He attended graduate school at Vanderbilt, studying German, French, and classics and earning his M.A. in 1898. One of his professors there was James H. Kirkland, a member of Wofford’s class of 1877. Chiles followed a well-trod path among young scholars in the 1890s when he traveled to Europe for additional graduate study at the University of Leipzig and the University of Paris. He returned to St. Louis to teach French and German at Washington University for a year, and then spent four years as a journalist on the staff of the St. Louis Globe-Democrat. He also studied law and was admitted to the Missouri bar. While in St. Louis, he met and married Marie Theresa Dunckel, a member of a prominent ethnic German family in the city. Appointed to an instructorship at the University of Illinois, he undertook studies toward the doctorate in German language and history. After earning his Ph.D. in 1908, he continued teaching at Illinois, published his dissertation, and in 1910, accepted an appointment at Southern University in Alabama. After three years there, and a year at the University of Wisconsin, he came to Wofford to head the department of modern languages. 

Before arriving at Wofford, Dr. Chiles had written his first textbook, German Prose Composition. Earlier copies identified him as a faculty member at Wisconsin, but subsequent printings recognized him as a Wofford professor. His second textbook, German Composition and Conversation, appeared in 1931. In 1935, he and one of his graduate school mentors wrote First Book in German. The book went through two revisions and was republished in 1942 and 1948. In 1940, Chiles wrote Intermediate German Readings, a reader for more advanced college German students. Chiles’ textbooks had wide influence. The American armed forces adopted German Composition and Conversation as a text during World War II, and the book was used in England as well. One of Chiles’ faculty colleagues noted that First Book in German had become a classic, useful both as a reference source and as an elementary textbook. 

Chiles is perhaps best remembered for a group that he, with 21 Wofford students, formed in February 1928. Known simply as Deutscher Verein, or German Union, the organization promoted the study of German language and culture. The club became an active literary organization on campus. Chiles used his contacts at other colleges and universities to promote the idea of a national German honor society. Within a year, he and student John O. Eidson ‘29, later a dean at the University of Georgia, had organized Delta Phi Alpha National Honorary German Fraternity. Wofford became home to the alpha chapter, and Central College, Chiles’ alma mater, became home to the beta chapter. For the rest of his life, Chiles worked to promote Delta Phi Alpha and watched it grow to some 9,000 members at his death. 

Chiles retired from the faculty following his 70th birthday in 1947. His students and colleagues all spoke highly both of his character and his scholarship, recognizing the disciplined approach he took to his research and teaching. One student, Herbert Hucks ’34, who became college librarian and archivist, noted that “from the moment I entered Dr. Chiles’ classroom, his scholarship, his sense of humor, and his interest in having every student do his best impressed me.” Another student who became a colleague was Professor W. Raymond Bourne ’23, who remembered that “He loved German and transmitted something of this love to generations of students.”

John Quitman Hill – from Textile Mill Worker to Rhodes Scholar

Only five Wofford graduates have been named Rhodes Scholars, three in the earliest years of the program and two since World War II.  One of these five, Professor John Quitman Hill, has a particularly interesting biography.  A childhood illness prevented him from attending school until he was eleven years old.  Many children would never catch up after such a late start, but not only did John Hill graduate from high school only seven years later, he went on to earn some of the highest academic honors in the world. 

After he graduated from Gaffney High School, he took a job in a textile mill in Lyman, where he met and married his wife.  He became part of a substantial number of students who worked in textile mills while attending Textile Industrial Institute, now Spartanburg Methodist College. 

During World War II, he enlisted in the U. S. Marine Corps.  In 1945, following  the end of World War II, he enrolled at Wofford as a sophomore and graduated at the end of the 1947 summer term.  The newly minted college graduate was 28 years old.  While at Wofford, he worked at night in the Pacific Mill in Lyman as a card grinder.  He completed his Wofford courses with all A’s and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.  A year later, he won the prestigious Rhodes Scholarship, and from 1948 to 1951, he studied at Oxford.  He earned his B. A. in the Honours School of Mathematics, working with such scholars as J. S. deWet,, E. C. Thompson, J. H. C. Whitehead, and E. C. Titchmarsh.  His primary fields of study were pure and applied mathematics and Riemanian geometry. 

Returning with his family to South Carolina, he taught high school in Duncan briefly before going on to teach at the University of Tennessee.  He returned to Spartanburg, where he taught briefly at Converse before joining the Wofford faculty in 1953.  In 1955, he was awarded the Oxford Master of Arts degree, entitling him to sit as a member of Oxford’s Convocation. 

A devoted teacher, Hill became one of the college’s first John M. Reeves professors in 1958 at the same time he was named chairman of the mathematics department.  Dean’s List students recognized him for superior teaching, and he received the college’s inaugural distinguished teaching award in 1961.  Students in the yearbook noted that he always had time for students, and claimed that “everything looks easy when he explains it.”  No small compliment for a mathematician. 

Professor Hill died after a long illness in 1972 at the young age of 53.  Known for his interdisciplinary interests, Professor Hill conceived of an interdisciplinary seminar for faculty to examine the first principles of the various disciplines taught at Wofford.  That interest was reflected in the creation of the John Q. Hill memorial lecture series at the college.  The math department’s award for its most outstanding senior is also named in his honor.  

"Brighten the corner where you are:" Coleman B. Waller's Wofford

Coleman B. "Frog" Waller was a longtime member of Wofford's science faculty, serving from 1904 to 1947.  Yet he's one of those names that has sort of disappeared into the annals of campus history, referenced only at the annual presentation of the chemistry department's senior award, which is named for him.  Dr. Waller was 

Born in Greenwood, C. B. Waller came to Wofford as a student in the late 1880s and graduated in 1892.  After teaching for a year, he went to graduate study at Vanderbilt, where he took a course in chemistry, physics, and mathematics.  He taught at Vanderbilt and at Clemson while working on his Ph. D., which he completed in 1903.  Immediately elected to a chair in science at Wofford, he was also given a year's leave to pursue studies in biology at Johns Hopkins.  Evidently, in those days, scientists had to wear many hats.  

In addition to carrying a heavy load in the sciences - heading the biology and chemistry departments, inaugurating the new Cleveland Science Hall in 1904 - Dr. Waller stayed busy in the church and in the community.  He was elected to city council, serving through a time period where the city moved to a commission form of government.  He was a member of the city's board of health, and he served as a consultant to the city water works on bacteriology and chemistry.  He was at various times a member of all three of the city's large Methodist churches.  He joined Central Methodist when he first came to Wofford, but changed his membership to Bethel Methodist to help that church grow.  He was successful in that mission as the church moved to a new location - its present location - and built a large new sanctuary during his early years there. After a quarter century, he moved to another growing church, Trinity Methodist in Converse Heights, where he remained for the rest of his life.   

He was, according to legend, the first member of the Wofford faculty to own a car, a Dodge "touring car."  Most interestingly, he built his own home on the campus, betwen the home where Dr. John Clinkscales lived and the home where Dr. Daniel DuPre lived.  If it's not obvious to you based on the names of those two houses, here's another clue.  The Kilgo-Clinkscales House is where the dean of the college lives, and the DuPre house has become the DuPre Administration Building.  Dr. Waller's house, which is in between the two, became the president's house in 1942.  Dr. Waller's agreement with the trustees was that he could build the house, but they had the right to purchase it from him if they needed it later.  The Wallers had no children, so for some twenty years, they let Wofford students live with them.  Some thirteen students shared their campus home during the 1930s and 1940s, all of whom went on to distinguished careers in the ministry, in education, or in other fields.  The Wallers acknowledged that they thought of these young men as the sons they never had.  

With a number of other great faculty members. Dr. Waller retired in 1947, but he continued teaching at Spartanburg Methodist College until his death in 1957.  In talking about his life of service, people at Wofford remembered his motto, which was to "Brighten the corner where you are."