Also inside:Find out why students, alumni and faculty chose Wayland.

The President’s Pen

Bidding Wayland farewellIn this, the last of my Footprints col-

umns as Wayland’s president, permit me a few personal reflections.

When Duanea and I think about it, serving as the president and spouse of a faith-based educational institution is not something we thought we would ever do. God called me to full-time Christian service 50 years ago. After we were married in 1974, my wife and I embraced our sense of God’s leading to local church ministry. We honestly assumed we would serve as a pastor and wife in a Baptist congregation for the entirety of our lives.

When San Marcos Baptist Academy invited Duanea and me to serve as their president and wife in 1996, we prayed about the decision for a long time. We loved the church we were pastoring – First Baptist Church of Corpus Chris-ti. When we accepted the Academy’s invitation, it was for us both a personal calling from the Lord – just like serving as a local Baptist church pastor and wife for 25 years was also a calling.

Let me confess that some days (not many!) I kind of wondered if God really knew what He was doing in calling me to education administration. I have occa-sionally felt unworthy of this wonderful responsibility. In those moments, it has been helpful for me to remember some-thing my father told me when I was a freshman in college.

I was struggling with my call to minis-try, and my Dad, a longtime pastor him-self, said this: “Paul, if God calls you to a task, He has promised somehow to equip and empower you to accomplish that task – no matter how inadequate you may feel.” That word has given me comfort again and again both as I have served as pastor of four Texas Baptist churches and president to two BGCT educational institutions.

For Duanea and me, our work at Wayland has been a wonderful and chal-lenging journey which we would not have traded for anything else in the world. In the pilgrimage of our professional life we have been gifted with two wonderful and meaningful careers, each of which has

touched us deeply and grown us spiritu-ally.

As I conclude my time at Wayland, I must thank the people who have been a part of my administrative team. These are passionate and gifted individuals who deserve more credit for any of the accom-plishments of the last 15 years than I do:

Dr. Bobby Hall, Executive Vice Presi-dent and Provost

Dr. Claude Lusk, Vice President En-rollment Management

Dr. Elane Seebo, Vice President Ex-ternal Campuses and Graduate Services

Mrs. Lezlie Hukill, Chief Financial Officer

Mr. Mike Melcher, Executive Director University Advancement

A special thanks to my extraordinary office team:

Mrs. Carolyn Andrews, Executive Assistant to the President

Mrs. Gracie Duggins, Administrative Assistant to the President

Most importantly, I want to thank my life partner and best friend who has stood shoulder to shoulder with me in every experience of my life since 1974. Duanea, your love, prayers, nurture, encourage-ment, (occasional) loving confrontation and care mean more to me than I can ever express. As Robert Browning wrote in “Rabbi Ben Ezra”:

Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be,The last of life, for which the first was

made:Our times are in His hand…Finally, I want to express my undying

gratitude to the members of the Wayland Baptist University Board of Trustees. Thank you for the privilege of serving Christ at this incredible school. This university has wonderful days ahead as it continues to serve the students God sends our way.

Grace and peace.

“...If God calls you

to a task, He has

promised somehow

to equip and

empower you to

accomplish that task

– no matter how

inadequate you may

feel. “

Dr. Paul ArmesPresident

Wayland Baptist University

Editorial BoardDanny Andrews, BA’72, PublisherJonathan Petty, BA’95, MA’09, Editor

Alumni OfficersTyke Dipprey, BSOE’96 , PresidentStacie Hardage, BBA’89 , Vice President Danny Andrews, BA’72, Director, Alumni Development

Executive BoardDr. Gary Abercrombie, BS’73 Kevin Carter, BBA’93 Brenda Gonzalez, BA’73Mike Manchee, BS’94, MEd’97Richard Miller, BS’87Danny Murphree, BS’69Daleyn Schwartz, AAS’85 Caren Smith, BA’92 Yolanda Vera, BA’83 Courtney Williams, BSIS’02Danny Wrenn, BA’84

Young Alumni BoardSarah Langston, BSIS’10, M.Ed’13, PresidentShaney Brewer, BSIS’10, M.Ed’13, Vice PresidentSarah Schmalzried, BBA’12, TreasurerBeth Hoffman, BBA’10, MBA’12, SecretaryShanna Donica, MBA’05L. Parker Francis, BAS’13James Heliton, BSOE’10Ashlee Juarez, BSIS’09Bobby McCloud, BBA’03Justin Ogden, BM’03Zane Powers, BA’02Kristen Reddoch, BA’12Rodrigo Silva, BBA’12Amber Smith, BA’07 Judith Weshinksey-Price, MPA’11

FOOTPRINTS, Volume 62, No. 1

Features2 Dr. Paul Armes retires after 15 years

6 WBU Historian retires after 41 years

20 Alum part of “Miracles from Heaven” story

Also Inside24 Why Wayland Features

26 News Briefs

32 Sports Briefs

35 National Diving Champion

38 Thinking Out Loud

45

Class Notes39

The Back Page

If you have any questions or comments about Footprints, e-mail Danny Andrews at andrewsd@wbu.edu, or Jonathan Petty at pettyj@wbu.edu,

or write to us in care of the Wayland Alumni Office.

16 Advancement unveils Impact 2020

FOOTPRINTS is published by the Association of Former Students at Wayland Baptist University. No outside advertis-ing is accepted. Wayland Baptist University is affiliated with the Baptist General Convention of Texas. Wayland Baptist University is accredited by the South-ern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges to award degrees at the associate, baccalaureate, and master’s levels. Contact the Commission on Colleges at 1866 Southern Lane, Decatur, Georgia 30033-4097 or call 404-679-4500 for questions about the accreditation of Wayland Baptist University. Non-profit rate postage paid at Lubbock, Texas 79404. Telephone (806) 291-3600. POSTMASTER: Please send address changes to FOOT-PRINTS, Wayland Baptist University, 1900 West 7th St. 1291 437, Plainview, TX 79072. Wayland Baptist University does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, age, sex or national origin in administration of its policies, admission policies, scholarships and loan programs, athletic and other school administration.

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Moving OnDr. Armes retires after 15 years at Wayland

Dr. Paul Armes sits comfortably at the small conference table in the corner of his third-floor office in Gates Hall. The Kenneth Wyatt

original “House Call” hangs above the table.The grandfather clock, donated to the university in memo-

ry of his mother, sings its hourly song.Dr. Armes is leaving, but not for a few more weeks. There

is still work to be done. Plenty of paperwork is piled on his desk and his day planner is open and full. The bookshelf is packed with books and crawling with frogs – a favorite collectible.

The 12th President of Wayland Baptist University, looks around his office.

“It’s time,” he says.Not one to talk about himself or his accomplishments, it’s

difficult for Dr. Armes when he reflects on his time at Way-land, but he knows that time has come to an end and he is comfortable and secure in that decision.

“Nothing here is in any way pushing us away. No one has ever encouraged us to do this. Everyone has been extraor-dinarily gracious and kind in their response to us,” he said. “But it’s time.”

Dr. Armes will retire effective June 30, leaving behind the university he has served for the last 15 years. His last official duty as president will be to conduct graduation ceremonies on May 7, but he will continue to work through June to ac-complish a few personal goals and fulfill some commitments to which he feels obligated.

Wayland has grown under Armes’ leadership. Since being named president in 2001, Wayland’s budget has grown from $25 million to $65 million. Enrollment reached a record high of 6,834 students in 2012. Davis Hall, Jimmy Dean Hall and the Laney Student Activities Center all opened. Wayland developed a Mission Center and began offering courses and a religion degree in the African nation of Kenya. The School of Music reached All-Steinway School status. Numerous aca-demic programs have been added to the curriculum, includ-

by JONATHAN PETTYDirector of Communications

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ing the Doctor of Management degree that Wayland will begin teaching later this year.

Knowing, however, that it took a lot of work from a lot of people, Armes is slow to take credit for any of it.

“The thing I would say that I will always remember about my 15 years at Wayland is that I was surrounded by wonderful folks who worked really hard,” he said. “And together as a team, as a family, including the entire university family, we took some really positive steps in really positive directions.”

When looking back, Armes said it is the people that will al-ways be his fondest memories. Not just the ones he worked with, but the ones he came in contact with throughout the last 15 years.

“I remember early in my tenure, going to Sierra Vista to participate in commencement,” he said. “I was the speaker that day.”

After the ceremony, Dr. Armes was approached by a new graduate named Paula who asked about the medallion he wore. The question sparked a conversation that resulted in Paula telling him her story. As a non-traditional student, she didn’t want to attend Wayland because she would be required to take six hours of Biblical history in order to graduate. Wayland’s price and schedule, however, were the best fit for her so she reluctantly registered to attend. Little did she expect the effect those two Bible cours-es would have on her life.

“She really came to the point

of understanding that what she considered to be faith in her life wasn’t,” Armes said. “At the end of the New Testament class, [campus dean Jeff Barnes] prayed with her, and she prayed to receive Christ.”

As a result of her decision, she witnessed to her family and both of her children made commitments to Christ and her husband made a recommitment of his life to Christ. After telling her story, Paula told Dr. Armes to never stop requiring those six hours of Biblical history.

“That’s really who and what we are,” Armes said. “That is the unique element of Wayland that you can’t always find at other locations and in other schools.”

Those types of stories are what have fueled the man who never expected to work in high-er education. He surrendered to the ministry as a teenager and never saw his career taking him out of the pastorate – especially not into a role in higher educa-tion.

“I was not a stellar student in college,” he said. “I did OK, but not exceptional.”

That changed when he entered seminary. Seeing the proverbial writing on the wall, Armes understood that to be a better pastor he should be a teaching pastor. To that end, he sought a Ph.D. at Southwestern Seminary in Fort Worth.

The pastorate eventually led him to First Baptist Church in Corpus Christi. While there, he served on the board for San Marcos Baptist Acade-my, a preparatory boarding

school affiliated with the Baptist General Convention of Texas and accredited by the South-ern Associate of Colleges and Schools, the same agency that accredits Wayland.

As the president of San Mar-cos Academy prepared to retire, several members of the board approached Dr. Armes, asking him to resign so they could consider him for the president’s position.

“I did resign,” Armes said. “I wanted to give them a fair opportunity to consider me and I wanted a fair opportunity to consider the possibility.”

Dr. Armes said he and his wife, Duanea, loved the church in Corpus, where they had served for eight and a half years, and they were not looking to leave. As they prayed about the decision, they did not feel led to pursue the position at San Marcos. But the board was persistent, returning two more times to talk to him.

“We decided we hadn’t prayed quite enough about it,” he said. “As we prayed and thought and reflected it became clear to use that it was exactly what God wanted us to do.”

Dr. Armes accepted the position and five years later, he was approached by the Wayland Board of Trustees and asked to interview for the president’s position at the Wayland campus. At that time, Dr. Wallace Davis was moving into a chancellor’s position to oversee the Wayland system. The president’s position would oversee the operations of the Plainview campus.

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Dr. Armes accepted the position in 2001. A year later, Davis retired and the Board of Trustees opted to return to a system in which the president oversees the entire Wayland system. It was in 2002 when Dr. Armes moved to his corner office on the third floor.

“In a way, all of this has kind of been a surprise to me,” he said. “I never sought to be an educator. I’m still a pastor at heart.”

Dr. Armes’ leadership style was similar to how he would lead a large congregation, giv-ing some clear direction when needed, but trying always to care about the people who are part of the family.

Looking back on the last 15 years, there are some things Armes wishes he could have done differently. He wishes he could have raised another $50 million for the university and seen the completion of a new Flores Bible Building. He also wishes he would have done more to celebrate the suc-cesses of the university family throughout the years.

“I’m not sure I’ve always celebrated the good things that we have done as a university -- not me, but the university – maybe as dramatically or as significantly as we needed to,” he said. “I’m just aware of the fact that everything I have done has been dynamically linked to very special people who have walked beside. Who have given so much of their lives to this university. Who have done superb work that I am proud

of. But there are times as a university that you ought to celebrated. When good things happen, you need to acknowl-edge those.”

As retirement grows clos-er, Dr. and Mrs. Armes have already begun making plans … and most of those plans revolve around their five grandchildren.

“I would just like to be a part of their lives. I would like to be able to interact with them, and Duanea would, too,” he said. “Duanea is such a wonderful grandmother. She is better at

her job than I am at mine.”Dr. Armes credits much of

his success to his wife, and he gets emotional talking about how their relationship has grown over the past 15 years.

“The delight of the love that we have for each other and the dependence that we have on each other and on the Lord in this journey, particularly at Wayland, has been something that we have learned and expe-rienced together,” he said. “We are closer now than we have ever been. If you had asked if

footprints 5

that would have been possible 25 years ago I would have said absolutely not. But we have grown together.”

Dr. Armes said they plan to travel in retirement, visit the Grand Canyon and all the national parks in Utah. But the first planned trip may be to Germany to visit their granddaughter … and her parents, of course. The Armes’ daughter, Ashley, works with the military and is currently at a military base in Germany. Their other daughter, Sarah, is a nurse in Lubbock.

Along with traveling and grand-kids, Dr. Armes hopes to have the opportunity to preach more in retirement. He says it is still a very important part of his calling to ministry and it is a part that he hasn’t been able to exercise quite as much as he would have liked.

As for Wayland, he feels that the university is on the verge of a prosperous period. New programs targeting Texas Department of Criminal Justice employees and Dr. Clinton Lowin’s Kaleo project in religion are just a few of the areas where Dr. Armes feels the university has real opportunity to grow. He also expects Wayland to remain a beacon for Christian higher education.

“This is a place where life-changing conversations happen,” he said. “Not just about knowledge, but about the spiritual dynamic of life. About a person’s relationship with Christ. About what God’s plan is for life.

“Those conversations happen every day in classrooms, the cafeteria and other locations. I’m proud of that fact.”

Board names Bobby Hall next President

The Wayland Baptist University Board of Trustees vot-ed April 28 to name Dr. Bobby Hall the 13th president of the university.

Dr. Hall presented his vision for the university during a campus review on Friday, April 22. In it, he expressed a desire to double the school’s endowment and dramatically increase enrollment within 10 years. He said development will be a key component of his presidency as the university continues to search for ways to help offset the cost to students. He also said he will focus on enrollment with the virtual campus being

by JONATHAN PETTYDirector of Communications

see HALL, page 19

As the saying goes, if you drop your pen you might as well drop the course.

The simple reasoning was that in the time it took to locate and retrieve the pen, you would have missed too

much material to make it worth your while to try and catch up.

Covering material quickly has been a definitive trait of Dr. Estelle Owens who taught her first college history class while completing her doctoral coursework at Auburn. Her fast-paced style served her well

throughout the years, but it didn’t necessarily start out that way.

“I had prepped and prepped and prepped and prepped and I thought, ‘Oh, I have plenty of material here. This will buy me about two weeks and I can keep working,’” Owens said about her first teaching experi-

6 footprints

by JONATHAN PETTYDirector of Communications

Turn the PageAfter 41 years, Dr. Owens ready to write the next chapter in her personal history

Dr. Estelle Owens, left, works with her friend and mentor Dr. Gwin Morris after he hired her to teach history at Wayland in 1974.

footprints 7

ence. “Well, I shot through all of that material in about 15 minutes.”

While her first class didn’t go quite like she had planned, it was still a positive experience for the young doctoral student. It was on that day that Dr. Owens discovered what she was going to do with the rest of her life.

“The very first day, I walked into class. There were 30 young people out there all looking anxious and a little fearful. Before I even had a chance to introduce myself, what felt like a very, very bright light shined right in my eyes and the literal voice of God said, ‘Pay attention, Owens, this is what I want you to do,’” she said.

Dr. Owens has answered God’s call on her life, teaching history with a flair for the humorous that made the subject matter interesting, if not entertaining. But after 41 years in the classroom, Dr. Owens is writing the final chapter of her teaching career as she retires June 30.

Coming to WaylandDr. Owens grew up in Jasper,

TX, nearly 600 miles from Plainview. Her older sister, Mary, was two years ahead of her in school, although they were separated in age by only 13 months. As Mary was approaching graduation, she began researching colleges and universities with little sister’s anxious anticipation.

“We wanted to go to Baylor,” Ow-ens said. “But my parents didn’t have that kind of money and weren’t going to have that kind of money because they had three children (a brother) in college in four years and that’s a killer for anybody.”

The music minister at their church was a Wayland graduate, and one of

their older friends had come to Way-land to try and play basketball for the Flying Queens.

“She’d come home for visits and just tell us all about it,” Owens said. “It sounded really intriguing and one of the most beautiful things about Wayland was that it was 600 miles from home.”

In February of 1965, Ow-ens’ parents drove her and her sister to Plainview to visit the cam-pus. Owens said it didn’t take long for them to decide Wayland was

the school for them. When they arrived, Gates Hall was sitting atop a little rise on the Texas Plains, shroud-ed in a blanket of snow.

“(Mary) looked at me. I looked at her as we sat there in the back seat and said, this is the place,” Owens said. “That was a conviction from the time I was a sophomore in high school -- that I was coming to Way-land.”

Life Changing EventsAs with many freshmen Dr. Ow-

ens began to find herself and find her voice during her freshman year in 1967. She was not a fan of freshman orientation, to say the least, and she wasn’t going to participate in it.

“It was humiliating,” she said. “It gave people who wanted it a chance to be incredibly rude. The first time an upperclassman called me stu-pid and meant it, I was really taken aback. Nobody had ever called me stupid and meant it.”

Dr. Owens decided that she would not participate in freshman orientation and refused to be part of the humiliating, belittling treatment -- a decision that would cause some consternation among her fellow freshmen. Two of her classmates called her out and berated her for be-ing an embarrassment to the entire class. They told her she would never amount to anything and that she should leave Wayland immediately.

“When I had dried my tears over that one, it really made me mad,” she said. “I think that fire in the gut that they generated without intending to was a life-altering moment for me.”

Owens won the Outstanding Freshman Award that year.

That wasn’t the only event that helped shape Owens’ future, how-ever. The other came in the class-room as she took a zoology course during her freshman year. Dr. J. Hoyt Bowers was in charge, and he had the reputation of really testing his students.

“He scared the wax out of me and out of everybody else. The man did not suffer fools and he would let you know when you had stepped out of line in some way,” Owens said. “Dr. Bowers is one of the finest teachers I ever had.”

Owens was lucky to have an older sister who encouraged her to take copious amounts of notes in Dr. Bow-ers’ class. Still, as a shy freshman she “kept a low profile.” But when it came to the lab practical exam, she could hide no longer. Owens aced the exam to the surprise of Bowers who was used to having only biology majors ace the practicals. He tried to talk her into becoming a science major, but the historian would have nothing of it.

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“That was a great experience for me because it was the hardest B I ever earned,” she said. “You come out of high school just convinced you are the cock of the walk -- just pretty darn smart. That first college class needs to disabuse you of that idea so that you get into the habit of studying.”

A habit she has continued throughout her adult life.

Professor OwensDr. Owens was completing her

doctoral coursework at Auburn in 1974, preparing to move into the re-search and dissertation phase of her degree program when she was con-tacted by Dr. Gwin Morris, offering her a teaching position at Wayland.

Morris, who currently serves Wayland on the Board of Trustees, was a history teacher when Owens was an undergrad. The two quickly developed a mentor/mentee relation-ship that blossomed into friendship. A doctoral students without a job, Ow-ens jumped at the chance to teach history under Morris.

“If that call had been a button hook in the well water, it could not have been clearer,” she said. “And for 41 years it has been clear.”

Much of her early work load included teaching in Lubbock with students who were older than she was and all carried guns. The Law Enforcement Education Program had just been funded by the feder-al government and Wayland was offering classes to law enforcement personnel in the basement of the courthouse. Not only did every stu-dent carry a gun as required by their department regulations, but they also seemed to Owens, to be smokers.

“Fortunately for me it was never a smoking gun,” Owens quipped.

Still, it was in those early classes that she discovered the bond that was built between students and their professors who cared for them.

Dr. Owens was teaching class one night and it was “snowing to beat the band.” As class dismissed, Ow-ens made the slow trek back to Plain-view. When she returned to class the next week, two of her students, who were Department of Public Safety officers, mentioned that she lived in a very nice apartment complex. Owens discovered that they had followed her home in the snow storm to make sure she arrived safely.

“I thought, Wow! That’s pretty awesome,” she said. “I had students who were very concerned about me because they recognized the kid just off the turnip truck.”

Working with studentsDr. Owens could probably write

a book full of student stories. Many were wonderful, positive experience. Some were not. And others could leave a person scratching her head.

One female student actually questioned Dr. Owens’ authority as a professor, saying she had no right to be teaching a college class because she was not married. She should be home, “scrubbing the kitchen floor and caring for my aged parents.” When asked if her parents knew where she was and what she was doing, Owens responded that they absolutely knew what she was doing and they were very proud of her.

“But that was the expectation,” she said. “What women do is get

Dr. Estelle Owens (standing) with her late sister, Mary, and brother-in-law, Ken Sharpe.

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married. What men do is make a living. Women have babies. Women keep house. Women don’t teach at the university level.”

The fact is, Owens did have a special man in her life, but he “walked off into the sunset with somebody else,” teaching her a valu-able lesson.

“When the great disappointments come, you man up, you pray it through or you fold,” she said. “There are no other choices.”

That student eventually left Way-land, but not before she had shared her dream of marrying and having eight children.

Other student stories weren’t quite so dramatic. Sometimes it was just about finding the right way to communicate in order to make a point. In one particular class, dis-cussing how difficult it was for a great many people to earn a living in the American West, Dr. Owens was trying to find a way to impress upon students the prevalence of prostitu-tion without offending anyone.

“How do I explain this on a Baptist campus so they understand it, but it doesn’t embarrass anybody?” she asked herself.

She started out by referring to the many women who made their living as “princesses of the pavement.”

“About half the class got that … the little twittering that goes on,” Owens said.

However, one male student didn’t seem to follow her nuanced meta-phors. So Owens tried another term that once again fell on deaf ears, perhaps lost in translation or sim-ply a case of one not having been exposed to such bawdy, east-Texas terminology.

“You know, we have a great many euphemisms for this,” Owens said.

“I went through about 20 phrases. I finally just gave up and said, ‘It’s a whorehouse!’”

The student finally understood, but not before Owens had exhausted every intent to communicate the idea in moderately less offensive terminol-ogy.

“But on the other hand,” she said, “it was really good that he had no clue what that was.”

Spending her retirementWhile a book of student stories

would be an interesting endeavor, Dr. Owens first order of business in retirement will be a book of another kind – the Wayland history book. Ow-ens was tasked by the university to write an official, un-abridged, “warts-and-all” history of the university that will expose the good, the bad and the ugly. Much of her early research was used for the coffee table book, “The Wayland Century” that was published in conjunction with the university’s centennial celebration in 2008. Since then, the research documents have been piling up in Owens’ house.

“I think in every room of my house, except maybe the bathrooms, I have stuff on this book,” she said. “I have to get it all shifted into the great room.”

Owens said she still has holes in her research and she hopes to plug those by spending plenty of time at microfiche readers in various librar-ies. Her desire to retire and complete the book was influenced in part by the death of her sister. Mary Sharpe retired at the age of 66 with plans of how she would be spending her free time. It was only six months later that she passed away.

“I don’t think I had ever really come face-to-face with the reality that none of us knows how long we

are going to be this side of glory,” she said.

Owens said there will definitely be some good and some bad in the history book as the human side of Wayland led to poor decision in some instances. But there is plenty of good as well, as the human spirit brought Wayland through some very tough times. For someone who has had a front-row seat for the past 41 years, her favorite chapter to write will be that of Dr. Glenn Barnett, who was interim president from 1987-89. He was responsible for saving the uni-versity at a very difficult time.

“Dr. Barnett was a literal answer to prayer … an awful lot of peoples’ prayers,” Owens said.

Not only will Owens focus on completing the history book, but she hopes to do some traveling. She wants to visit Australia and New Zealand, two places she hasn’t been. Then she hopes for return trips to Great Britain.

And she is going to rest. Owens once said in an interview that was included in Wayland’s centennial video, that if you no longer have a passion for students and a passion for teaching, then it’s time to “go sell shoes or something.”

“When you can’t roll out of bed every morning excited about going to class and seeing what’s going to come out of students’ mouths, when it’s physically difficult to do that, then it’s time to pack it in before you start doing damage,” she said.

“I know it’s going to be tough and I’m going to have some mornings sitting out on my deck sipping that second pot of tea thinking, what have you done? This was a big mistake,” she said. “Then I’ll start that third pot and mellow out, and everything will be fine.”

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When Eddie Turner turns out the light in his office at

Wayland’s University Store on June 30, he’ll have completed 42 years of employment – the second longest current tenure on campus.

Director of Sales and Ser-vices, he is a 1968 graduate of Hale Center High School and received his BA in music in 1972. He served a year as mu-sic director at South Plains Bap-tist Church near Lockney and then three years at First Baptist in Groom while in school.

A student worker for manag-er Clyde Herring in the book-store at Gates Hall, he served two years as a missionary journeyman to Okinawa and then came back to Wayland and spent a year as dorm coun-selor at Brotherhood Hall before succeeding longtime friend Danny Murphree as bookstore manager. Murphree is Director of Property Management at Wayland.

A year after the University Store was opened in McClung Center in 1981, Turner earned a Master of Science in Man-agement from Houston Baptist

University. He also did master’s work at Texas Tech.

In 1978, he married Sue Hammit of Hale Center, who graduated from high school there in 1972 and went on to play basketball three years for Baylor University. She is retired after teaching for 30 years at Plainview Christian Academy which the Turners help found in 1985.

The Turners, who recently completed construction of a home at Lake Ransom Canyon east of Lubbock and where Turner has served as music di-rector at Ransom Canyon Com-munity Church for 18 months, have two daughters. Erin and

Damon West have two children and Andi and Justin Knowles have one child. They all live in Lubbock.

The girls have enjoyed sing-ing with their father on numer-ous occasions with Sue accom-panying on the piano. Turner also has sung one of the songs written for Wayland’s Centen-nial – “No Small Dreams” – for every Wayland Ring Ceremony since 2009.

Regarding his longevity at Wayland, Turner said, “The truth is the Lord made it very evident when I was offered jobs at other places – including music ministry opportunities – that Wayland was where I was supposed to be. One year I put money down to buy Our House Gifts here. Susie was going to run it for a while until I could take over. But I didn’t sleep for three nights because I realized that’s not what I was supposed to do. Although my first degree is in music and I thought I would serve full-time in churches, I could tell that also was not what I was supposed to do.”

However, Turner did serve as music minister for three years at First Baptist Lockney and then 38 years at his home congregation, First Baptist in Hale Center.

Closing shopTurner retiring after 42 years at the University Storeby DANNY ANDREWSDirector of Alumni Development

Turner says hiring and mentor-ing student workers has been one of the most rewarding parts of his job, estimating about 600 students have worked for him through the years. He hears from many of them and some stop by for visits when they’re in town.

“It’s fun to see some of their kids come through Wayland. I’ve got to get out of here before the grandkids start coming,” Turner said with a laugh.

Turner says the University Store – always beautifully decorated for Christ-mas – is one of the best kept secrets in Plainview, offering a wide variety of gifts and clothing.

“We didn’t really handle gifts the first 10 years in this building,” he said, noting that profits from the store help fund Wayland’s budget.

The campus post office and print shop also are operated under his su-pervision and he serves as the univer-sity’s purchasing director.

Turner, who has received the Life-time Service Award, Staff Leadership and Distinguished Staff awards, has served as Texas board member as well as president of the Southwest College Bookstore Association that encompass-es six states and Southwest region board member for the National Asso-ciation of College Bookstores. He was named Certified Collegiate Retailer of the Year in 2009.

He has been a sponsor of Phi Mu Alpha music fraternity and Kappa Kappa Psi band fraternity and served as backup director for the International Choir of which he was a member for four years during his college days. He also sold tickets at Wayland basketball games for about 35 years.

“I’ll still lead the music at Ransom Canyon, piddle with my hobbies of racquetball, fishing, landscaping and woodworking and play with the grand-kids,” he said of his retirement plans.

Why Wayland?Kacy Pierce

JuniorSports Management

Mesquite, Texas

“Wayland was my first choice for college. I had my degree plan and knew people who had gone here and really liked it. I’ll probably stay and get my master’s here. When I first came to Wayland for Koinonia (Welcome Week), they put in you in a ‘family’ and I felt really loved. The professors and others really want to see you grow and succeed; you get to know your professors on a personal basis. Dr. Daniela Derdarian teaches anatomy and the class was really hard but she would sit down with a group of us in a circle and explain things to make sure we got the concepts and not just now to pass the test. I’ve also really enjoyed being involved in Baptist Student Ministries.”

Calvin McDanielGraduating Senior

Graphic DesignMarble Falls, Texas

“Wayland has constantly pushed me where I’ve been immature or lacking in areas to be more re-sponsible and people here have encouraged me along the way in discouraging times. In order to make friends, you have to be a friend so I started to jump out of the shadows my freshman year by being myself and hanging out with several different groups. I eventually found my group of friends but met a lot of new people who want to love you. I’ve been heavily involved in Baptist Student Ministries and random activities around cam-pus including events Student Activities puts on and by helping other organizations. What kept me coming back to Wayland is the people. You can even argue with people and they’ll still love you through the process. Wayland has helped me grow up and be grounded and I found a good church home. I honestly would recommend Wayland because the faculty loves you and pushes you to strive for excellence. They’ll help you find scholarships and financial aid and will encourage you and pray with you.”

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“I always felt when I got to Wayland that it was the fulfillment of a

lifetime dream,” says Dr. Glyn-dle Feagin, who will retire in May after 24 years of teaching Greek and New Testament.

“God called me to the ministry when I was 18, but all the time I’ve been at Wayland I felt this is what God had been preparing me for.”

While he was pastoring in Eufaula, Okla., a former profes-sor encouraged him to pursue a Doctor of Philosophy degree at Southern Seminary in Louis-ville, Ky.

“I always had thought of myself as a pastor but I be-gan to think and pray about it and didn’t know if God would open a door for me. But he did because I had known Dr. Fred Meeks (the chair of the reli-gion division) when I pastored at Fairview Baptist in Durant, Okla. and he was at First Bap-tist and I had known Dr. Paul Sadler when we were at Baylor and Paul recommended me.”

Born in McKinney, Feagin graduated from Garland High School in 1967, received his BA in religion from Baylor in 1971, his Master of Divinity

from Southwestern Seminary in 1975, the Doctor of Ministry from Phillips University in Enid, Okla. in 1990 and his PhD in New Testament from Southern Seminary in 1993. His disser-tation was on “The Irony of the Kingdom in Mark.”

Feagin says he has “en-joyed teaching Greek more than I ever imagined. I have the students who make it through four semesters so they are kind of special to me…they’ve kind of endured me,” he chuckles.

Feagin, who pastored East Audubon Baptist Church near Louisville when he was in sem-inary, estimates he has taught about 2,500 students in Plain-view and in classes at Lubbock,

including a number who have gone on to become pastors.

He also has served 14 interim pastorates, mostly in the Plainview area, and is taking Intentional Interim training to assist churches in pastoral transition.

Feagin’s wife, Harriet, is a retired math teacher. He has one daughter, Beth Velez of Lubbock, an educational diag-nostician.

He enjoys walking six days a week following four heart bypasses in 2008, watching sports – especially the Baylor Bears – and is a voracious reader of scholarly books and presidential biographies and reads history for fun.

Glyndle Feagin set to retire after 24 years in the Wayland classroom

A Fond Farewell

by DANNY ANDREWSDirector of Alumni Development

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Why Wayland?Bailey Stengler

juniorElementary Education

Chicago

“I was recruited to play soccer two weeks before pre-season. I fell in love with the school and all it had to offer. The School of Education has prepared me very well for my desire to teach special education. I have had several opportunities for field experience and a lot of opportunities in the classroom. Dr. Jo Beth DeSoto has really worked with me as my certification testing is coming up. She works with several of us each week to study our material. All the teachers want me to succeed. They push you to be better. Being so far from home, I’ve made a family at Wayland. The environment is so loving and welcom-ing and it’s not just my soccer teammates. I didn’t know a soul when I came but you can be sitting by yourself and someone will come up and speak to you. I’ve enjoyed being involved in Fellowship of Christian Athletes. President’s Ambassadors and Baptist Student Ministries.”

Robert LopezGraduating senior

Exercise and Sport ScienceEl Paso, Texas

“Although I came to play bas-ketball, I really like the environment at Wayland. I’ve had a couple of coaches get me out of bed to make early-morning classes. I guess I could have gone somewhere else and maybe played more but I kept coming back because of my team-mates and my coaches. They trust me and know I can help the team. I’ve tried to go to Fellowship of Christian Athletes meet-ings as often as I can. Winning the conference tournament the past two years has been the biggest thrill for me. This is a good community to live in; everyone is very helpful. It’s a good place to start your college experience and potentially finish your degree. Like most of the students at Wayland, I’m not a Baptist, but I felt very welcomed, very at home here.”

The lady who has been paying most of the bills at Wayland for almost a quar-ter of a century is retiring May 31.

Lena Morphis will be leaving as Coordinator of Accounts Payable just two weeks short of 25 years at the university.

The native Plainvi-ewan went to school in her hometown until moving up the road to Kress the last semester of her senior year in 1962.

She worked for Delta and Pineland Seed Co. for three years before coming to Wayland. She reconciled bookstore purchases for a year, then moved to Accounts Payable.

A member of First Assembly of God, she has been church treasurer, a nursery worker and a Sunday school teacher. She’s an avid fan of Wayland football, basketball and volleyball games and also enjoys doing needlepoint and is making quilts for her three grandchildren.

Lena and her husband David, retiring post of-fice supervisor for Wayland, have been married for 52 years.

They have two children, Kayla Kuykendall of Canyon and Darren Morphis of Lampasas.

“This has never been a stressful job for me, except maybe at audit time,” she said with a laugh. “I’ve enjoyed being in a good atmosphere where I don’t have to listen to dirty jokes and bad language from a bunch of truckers as I did in my former job.”

Due dateLena Morphis paid her last WBU billby DANNY ANDREWSDirector of Alumni Development

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As Tom Hall prepares to retire after two stints totaling 24

years at Wayland, he is remind-ed of what a baseball official told a coach about to bring his team to Plainview for a tourna-ment: “Hope you’re happy when you come, hope you’re happy when you leave.”

Hall, a native of Plainview, 1967 graduate of PHS and 1971 graduate of West Texas State University, was happy to come to Wayland in 1981 from his post as assistant manager of the Plainview Chamber of Commerce and happy as he contemplates taking a new post coaching girls’ basket-ball, teaching a Bible class for freshmen and sophomore boys and “other duties as should be assigned,” at Plainview Chris-tian Academy. He coached the girls’ team this past season.

Hall was coordinator of the then-year-old McClung Uni-versity Center and security coordinator when he joined the Wayland staff and later was head of student services and contacted services such as food, maintenance, housekeep-ing and security.

After working at KKYN radio from 1997-2009, doing an

early-morning radio show with Brandy Haines, who now works in the Wayland Business Office, and serving as the Voice of Bulldog Sports, he returned to Wayland as Executive Director of Student Services and Dean of Students.

In his role, he has overseen Student Services, Housing, Stu-dent Activities, Health Services, Baptist Student Ministries, Tutorial Services, Food Service and Counseling, Career and Disability Services. “Student disciplinary actions also are a big part of the job,” said Hall.

During his first tour at Wayland he broadcast Way-land basketball games with his brother, new Wayland Presi-dent Dr. Bobby Hall and former Sports Information Director Ed-

die Owens. On many trips, his brother sat in the back of a van, working on his doctorate. They broadcast the Flying Queens in two national finals and the Pio-neers in one trip to the national championship game.

While working at the radio station, Hall broadcast three state championship games involving current Flying Queens coach Alesha Robertson-Ellis. He also did PHS football, bas-ketball, baseball, softball and an occasional volleyball match.

After he returned, he contin-ued to do basketball and some baseball and from 2012-14 was the play-by-play voice of Way-land football.

Besides enjoying broad-casting basketball, Hall says his other most enjoyable job at

Hall Reaches CurfewDean of Students moving on to focus on other endeavorsby DANNY ANDREWSDirector of Alumni Development

Why Wayland?Preston Rackley

FreshmanReligion

Calallen, Texas

“I came to Wayland on a base-ball scholarship. My high school, Hope Christian, won district for four years and almost won state twice. Although my grandparents, Charles and Valois Davenport (former trust-ee/adjunct religion professor and WBU graduate, respectively), have connections to Wayland, I came not knowing what to expect. But I felt welcomed by stu-dents and faculty at Big Weekend and Gold Rush. The School of Religion has instilled a lot of scripture in me and helped me know how to read and understand the Bible better. I’d like to pursue student ministry and maybe work in Canada someday. I’m impressed how much the university cares about its stu-dents and wants them to succeed. I, for sure, would encourage any high school graduate to come to Wayland.”

Ashley PriceSenior

Intercultural MissionsPampa, Texas

“I had not heard of Wayland until attending Big Weekend. There is a heartfelt atmosphere on campus, the professors care about you and will talk to you about class problems and life problems. I’ve had hands-on experience in missions. I’ve been to Kenya three times – once for seven months; I took online classes and the professors kept me up on my degree plan while I was there – and once to Myanmar. I’ve also worked with Muslim women in the Dearborn, Mich. area, using the Bi-ble to teach them English as a Second Language. I want to get my MBA and then teach women in poverty in the United States or other countries how to do business. I’ve been involved in student ministry groups like Diakonia, Apostolos and Kerygma. I’ve been the student leader for Kerygma working in the barrio in East Plainview, doing door-to-door evangelism, home visits, partnering with churches on projects and helping with the Community Thanksgiving Dinner and a summer fiesta.”

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Wayland was “when I was Director of Student Services, working with the clubs and organizations.”

An inductee of the Wayland Athlet-ics Hall of Honor and member of the hall’s selection committee, he also is a recipient of the Roy C. McClung Award for support of athletics. He was named Plainview’s Man of the Year in 2004 by the Chamber of Commerce.

Hall and his wife Linda will be mar-ried 47 years in September. Mrs. Hall is a computer teacher at Estacado Middle School after many years at Ash Sixth Grade. They have one daughter, Jenny Rosetta of Baton Rouge, La. She and her husband, Randy, sports editor of the Livingston Parish newspaper and con-tributor to sports websites and internet audio shows, have two daughters. Mal-lory is a sophomore at Parkview Baptist and Darby is a second grader at La-Salle Elementary where Jenny teaches school. They are members of Istrouma Baptist Church.

Hall, who has coached the Plainview Lady Air basketball team in the summers the past 19 years, serves on the pub-lic relations committee of First Baptist Church.

He enjoys reading fiction, golf, and watching old movies, especially West-erns.

Remarking on his career at the university, Hall says, “Wayland has great people. We all have our problems and some days are better than others, but I have worked with outstanding people.”

Athletic Director Rick Cooper, whose games Hall broadcast when Cooper was head coach of the Pioneers, comment-ed: “Tom has had such an impact on broadcasting in this part of the country and also has made a career of guiding young people. Wayland has been a bet-ter place because of him. We’re going to miss him.”

An e-mail from Robert Black, then-Director of Church Music at Wayland, set Carolyn Andrews on a career-changing course.

She will be retiring soon as Executive Assistant to Presi-dent Dr. Paul Armes.

In 2000, Mrs. Andrews, who had served for 15 years as Min-ister to Children and Pre-School at First Baptist Church-Plain-view, felt God was leading her in a new direction.

Soon after, Black, former Minister of Music at the church for 16 years, communicated with her that applications were being taken for the position of assistant to new President Dr. Paul Armes. “You’ve got to apply for this job,” wrote Black, now Minister of Music at First Baptist-Muleshoe.

Mrs. Andrews had worked at the church off and on for about 25 years, first as Sec-retary to the Minister of Music and Administration and later as Receptionist/Secretary to the Minister of Youth and even a stint as church financial sec-retary before assuming her longest-tenured responsibility.

Her work career also included time at the law firm of Day Owen Lyle Voss and Owen where she worked with

former trustee Frank Day, was assistant to longtime Wayland trustee and legal counsel Gene Owen and worked with current legal counsel Rudd Owen, Gene’s son and Frank Day’s grandson.

Since 2007, Mrs. Andrews has primarily worked with Way-land’s trustees, preparing board reports and taking care of other duties associated with their reg-ular and special meetings and summer retreat-work sessions.

“Dr. Armes and I hit it off right away,” Mrs. Andrews recalled. “When I asked him later why he hired me, he said, ‘You’re a former Baptist pastor’s daughter so you’ll know how I think.” Armes had been a pastor for 25 years before serving for five years as president of San Marcos Baptist Academy.

“Working with Dr. Armes has been a real pleasure because of his professionalism and

Saying GoodbyeCarolyn Andrews retiring after 15 years in the president’s officeby DANNY ANDREWSDirector of Alumni Development

Don’t miss Homecoming 2016Homecoming 2016 for Way-

land is scheduled Sept. 16-17.Several outstanding alumni

will be recognized in chapel on Friday with the Legacy Lun-cheon to honor graduates of 50 years and longer to follow. A

theater production is scheduled for Friday and Saturday eve-nings and a cookout and pep rally will be held on Friday.

The Athletic Hall of Honor recognitions are slated for Sat-urday. The Homecoming Queen

will be recognized on Saturday afternoon when the Pioneers host Howard Payne in football.

More details will be included in the Summer issue of Foot-prints and will be sent in our monthly e-letter.

16 footprints

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compassionate spirit. Duanea Armes also has been a good friend and encour-ager,” said Mrs. Andrews, who twice has received the University Staff Service Award.

“I have had the pleasure of working with Freda Provence (former executive assistant to five Wayland presidents), Tommie Quebe, Deb Melcher, Caitlyn Walker and Gracie Duggins in our offic-es,” she said.

“Mrs. Andrews has been a wonder-ful professional assistant,” said Armes. “She has approached her responsibil-ities with extraordinary skill and com-mitment, and always knows how to get a job done effectively. She has been guided by a profound sense of loyalty to Duanea and me. Most of all, Caro-lyn loves Wayland Baptist University. The Andrewses will always be special friends. I honestly believe it would have been very difficult to do this job as pres-ident without her. I am so grateful that God brought her into life of the Wayland family.”

A native of Lamesa, she graduated from Plainview High School in 1968 and attended Wayland for three semesters before going to work full time.

Mrs. Andrews is a past president of Omega Delphin Study Club and served on the boards of the Hale County Crisis Center and Hale County Literacy Coun-cil, starting the Read First program to help first graders learn the importance of reading. She assists in the University Ministry of First Baptist Church.

She and her husband, Danny, who serves as Director of Alumni Develop-ment, have three children (all Wayland alumni) – Brandon Andrews of Berwick, Pa; Kayla Peltoma and husband Craig of Dallas; and Brad Andrews and wife Kayla K. of Plainview; and four grand-children – Karsten, Brylee and Kallie Andrews of Plainview and Josh Peltoma of Dallas.

Why Wayland?Alden Mann

JuniorExercise and Sport Science

Wimberley, Texas

“I wanted to go to college first to get a degree and secondly to play football. Only a few schools be-lieved in me and I made a decision to prove to anyone who doubted me that I could be a college player (he is an All-American linebacker). My coaches and teachers have believed in me and I’m not one to back out on a goal. Wayland has a closely-related sports community and Plainview is also behind me. I wouldn’t think of transferring. There are a lot of Plainview people with strong connections and I have been able to build up my credentials by shadowing Melinda Shiloh, a physical therapist in Lubbock. I love the small classes – maybe 23 in a class – that allow you to connect with professors one on one. I have made friends for a lifetime at Wayland.”

Daniel Capps Graduating SeniorMolecular Biology

Lovington, N.M.

“When I first started looking at colleges, I didn’t know anything about Wayland until I saw their booth at a college fair and saw they had a pre-pharmacy program. I ap-plied and it was one of my top two choices. At Big Weekend, I saw the faculty and staff really cared about students and thought it would be easier to learn in a smaller class environment. Class sizes are manageable so you’re not just a number or being taught by a graduate assistant. My pro-fessors in my major are good friends. I can always call on them for help. I’ve been a President’s Ambassador, and involved in the Texas Academy of Science, American Chemical Society and Pioneer Health Services for pre-health majors to volunteer at hospitals. I plan to attend the Texas Tech School of Pharma-cy starting August and want to work in a pharmacy someday and eventually own my own pharmacy. There’s a cliché that Wayland is like a family... and it pretty much is.”

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In a time when patriotism is being questioned and po-litical parties are in turmoil,

there is one group of people who understand what it means to be a citizen of the United States of America -- immigrants who have earned citizenship status.

Recently, the School of Fine Arts at Wayland Baptist Uni-versity celebrated as Associate Professor of Communication and Media Studies Dr. Yahui Zhang returned from Fort Worth where she participated in a cer-emony completing the natural-ization process and becoming an official citizen of the United States of America.

Zhang said choosing to become a citizen was very per-sonal and the love and support showed by her co-workers and students, who decorated her office with streamers, balloons and small United States flags, was overwhelming.

“This is my adopted coun-try,” Zhang said. “Personally, to me, although there are a lot of realities that we still have to work with, the American ideals are just so high and lofty that I strongly identify with them. That is one of the most important reasons that I decided to be-come a naturalized citizen.”

Zhang, originally from Xi’an,

China, came to the United States 14 years ago with her husband to pursue an educa-tion.

“I taught English when I was in China,” she said. “My hus-band and I knew that the best universities are in the United States. He, and myself, really wanted me to get the highest degree. That’s why we came to the United States. This is the land of opportunity.”

Zhang began the natural-ization process in October of 2015. Her final interview was held on Feb. 20 with the swearing in ceremony taking place on the 25th. At a time when the country is mired in a presidential election, Zhang is hoping she can be registered in time to vote in the general

election. She said there was a group at the ceremony handing out information and guidelines for completing voter registra-tion. Zhang said it will take her some time to go through the packet of information, but she is looking forward to being able to vote. In Texas, citizens must be registered 30 days prior to the election to be eligible to vote.

“This will be my first time exercising my right and respon-sibility as a citizen,” she said.

And while the current cam-paigns are heating up, she is not intimidated by the nature of American politics.

“It is polarized,” she said of the political situation, “but it’s still a democratic election pro-cess and we have to be grateful for that.”

WBU prof earns U.S. Citizenshipby JONATHAN PETTYDirector of Communications

Dr. Yahui Zhang stands out-side her office door that was decorated in celebration of her earning her U.S. citizenship.

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Why Wayland?Rossanna Ramos

JuniorSpanish

Catano, Puerto Rico

“I was playing volley-ball at a junior college in Florida and my coach sent an e-mail to Coach Jim Giacomazzi and he watched my videos and recruited me to play libero. It has been a good experience with my team-mates. We connected well. My classes have been hard but my favorite class is American Literature and I have gotten a lot of help from my teachers. I have found Wayland welcoming to an international student like me but not a lot of food like I’m used to at home. I’m majoring in Spanish and plan to be a teacher.”

Keyshawn HawkinsSophomore

Pre-EngineeringDenver City, Texas

“I came to Wayland (following in the footsteps of his sister, four-time volleyball All-American Shahala Hawkins) to play football. I first heard about Wayland when I was on campus for University Interscholastic League competition when I was in the eighth grade and really liked it. Coach (Butch) Henderson and Coach (Anton) Page are great coaches. As an African-American student, I have felt very welcomed. I have been involved in intramurals and have enjoyed getting to know everybody in small class environments. Football takes a lot of my time but I’m getting a good edu-cation and love playing here and want to graduate from Wayland.”

the most logical venue through which to experi-ence dramatic growth.

Dr. Hall has been associated with Wayland for more than 30 years, serving currently as the Executive Vice President and Provost, a posi-tion he has held since 2008. He has served in many capacities at Wayland, including assistant executive vice president, director of institutional research and effectiveness, director of graduate services, executive director of university rela-tions, assistant to the president for institutional advancement, director of public relations, and director of career planning and placement.

Dr. Hall holds a bachelor’s degree in busi-ness administration (1982) and a master’s degree in management (1985) from Wayland. He earned his Doctor of Education degree in higher education administration at Texas Tech University in 1994. He is also a 2015 graduate of The Council for Independent Colleges’ Executive Leadership Academy.

During Hall’s time as Executive VP and Provost, Wayland has created new degree programs, developed a comprehensive online program, established new teaching sites in multi-ple states, created WBU’s first doctoral program, implemented a system-wide digital imaging system, and explored international opportunities for Wayland in Japan, Mexico, China, and Brazil. He is also a faculty member in the School of Business. While a full time faculty member he earned the rank of professor of business. He received the university Distinguished Faculty Service Award and Faculty University Service Award. He was instrumental in beginning Way-land’s chapter of Students in Free Enterprise (now Enactus), and he has written, spoken, and served as a consultant on topics including higher education administration, institutional effective-ness, economic development, and marketing.

Dr. Hall currently serves as President of the Plainview Chamber of Commerce. His wife, Lau-rie, is the director of health services at Wayland. They have a daughter, Alex, and son, Lucas.

HALL from Page 5

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“Pastor Scott,” one of the characters in “Miracles from

Heaven,” a book on the New York Times Bestseller List and a popular movie of the same name, is Wayland graduate Dr. Scott Sharman, founding pastor of Alsbury Baptist Church in Burleson, Texas.

Sharman came to Wayland solely on the recommendation of his pastor at Hoffmantown Baptist Church in Albuquerque. “My first visit to the campus was the day I moved into McDon-ald Hall,” he says. He majored in sociology and minored in religion, graduating in 1978. He founded the suburban Fort Worth church 21 years ago.

“Miracles from Heaven” is based on the story of Annabelle Beam who suffered from pseu-do-obstruction motility disorder, a severe intestinal disease, but was healed after falling into the rotted-out core of a tree in 2008 at age nine.

Anna – as she prefers to be called – is the middle daughter of Kevin and Christy Beam who have been members of Shar-man’s church for several years. The family, which includes sis-ters Abby and Adelynn, lives in a rural area between Burleson and Alvarado where Beam is a veterinarian and also runs cat-

tle. His wife is a homemaker.At age 5, Anna began to

suffer severe abdominal pains and had emergency surgery at Cook Children’s Hospital in Fort Worth. She was referred to Dr. Samuel Nurko, a world-re-nowned surgeon at Children’s Hospital in Boston. She was put on 10 different medications and had a feeding tube in her nose but the doctor said there was no cure, only treatment options.

“She would go to Boston about every six weeks and have to stay two or three weeks,” said Sharman.

One windy day when she was nine, she and her older sister were climbing a big cot-tonwood tree in their backyard when one of the limbs began to crack. They scooted back

toward the trunk and Anna fell about 30 feet down the core of the tree.

Paramedics were called and had to get a tall ladder to see down into the trunk. After several hours, they were able to hoist the child out by a rope tied around her waist. She was airflighted to Cook Children’s Hospital but had no internal injuries or broken bones, just a few scrapes.

As Sharman relates, “A few days later the family was going out of town and Annabelle (as he calls her) told her mom, ‘I’m going to be OK.’ Her mom asked, ‘What do you mean?’ and she said, ‘When I was in the tree, I went to heaven.’ Christy had no idea what to do with that.

“Miracles from Heaven” features alum’s churchby DANNY ANDREWSDirector of Alumni Development

Pastor Scott Sharman stands by the tree featured in the movie “Miracles from Heaven.” Sharman is founding pastor of Alsbury Baptist Church in Burleson.

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“But when Annabelle was taken to appointments, she quit asking for pain medication and her stomach, which had been distended due to medica-tion, was back to normal. After several weeks, they took her off all medication and she was never sick again,” Sharman continued.

“She is very matter of fact that she died and went to heav-en. She said she didn’t want to go back but God told her she needed to go and added, ‘You’re going to be OK.’”

Sharman said the family spoke about the incident in church but Anna only talks about it if asked. He added, “The family was not parading this story around.”

Sharman says the book, written about a year ago and which mentions his church by name and refers to him as Dr. Scott Sharman rather than “Pastor Scott,” is better than the movie, with which Sony Pic-tures took expected liberties for dramatic effect.

However, Sharman says, “I was very pleased with the movie. They took about four years of life and whittled it down to two hours. They show Kevin and Christy pretty overwhelmed about their daughter’s illness and arguing about it. They nev-er argued.

“They show Christy losing her faith and questioning God. She never questioned; she was rock solid in the whole journey. A couple of ladies tell her that her daughter’s illness may be her fault because of uncon-fessed sin and others said if she just had enough faith, God

would make Annabelle well. That never happened in our church though someone else may have said that,” Sharman explained.

“Kevin is a strong ‘fix-it guy’ who was an All-American quar-terback at Hardin-Simmons and is in their Athletic Hall of Fame. He struggled watching his daughter being so sick. But the Beams were always in church, teaching Sunday school the whole time.”

Sharman said his charac-ter – “a bald-headed guy older than me (John Carroll Lynch) who plays in ‘The Walking Dead’” – gets 3 to 5 minutes in the movie. “I never did visit with him, but the guy who plays the father (Martin Henderson) spent a weekend getting a feel for our church and Kevin’s vet clinic.”

While praising the cine-matography of “Miracles from Heaven” as “right up there with ‘War Room’ (another popular Christian-based film), Sharman said Alsbury is “never men-

tioned by name and is depicted as an old traditional church, kind of like the Methodist church I grew up in.”

Sharman and his staff were invited to the world premiere of the movie in Dallas and his church booked a theater for opening weekend, selling out all 298 seats, and also had a book-signing event for Mrs. Beam. He said proceeds from the book will help the family pay enormous medical bills.

Sharman said the Beam family “has never wanted to come across as capitalizing on Annabelle’s story or pushing an agenda. They just told the story as it happened. A lot of people prayed for that little girl for a long time. Dr. Nurko, a very compassionate man who treated her, told Annabelle’s parents, ‘Your daughter is well, her motility is gone and this is not something kids typically get well from.’”

Anna is now a seventh grad-er in nearby Joshua and “full of life,” Sharman says.

Kevin Beam trimmed up the branches on the tree into which his daughter fell but left the trunk. “He just couldn’t cut it down, and carved a cross into the side of it,” said Sharman.

Acknowledging that some people are still skeptical of the story, Sharman said, “I would probably be skeptical, too, if I didn’t know the family. Anna-belle Beam was as sick as any child I have ever seen and she is well today after falling into that tree. Like the man healed by Jesus said, ‘All I know is once I was blind but now I can see.’”

Annabelle Beam, left, stands with her mother Christy. Annabelle is the subject of the movie “Miracles from Heaven.” They are members of WBU alum Scott Sharman’s church in Burleson.

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Wayland Baptist University officials are excited to kick

off the Impact 2020 capital cam-paign that focuses on providing students with a safe and com-fortable learning environment. The Offices of Advancement will be working on the campaign that was officially unveiled at the annual Evening with the President on April 16.

Over the next five years, the university will seek to raise $14 million to apply toward updat-ing facilities and providing a comfortable, safe and secure university where students can learn and grow both profession-ally and personally. This cam-paign is designed to improve student facilities and study areas, including infrastructure like plumbing, air conditioning and overall safety.

“This may not be the most glamorous capital campaign,” said Executive Director of Ad-vancement Mike Melcher, “but it is certainly one that will impact thousands of lives.”

Campaign objectives include• Remodeling parts of Gates

Hall, including restrooms and preparing unused

space for offices• Renovating the Moody

Science Building• Renovating three women’s

residence halls to make the structures more energy efficient, update HVAC sys-

tems and replace shower facilities

• Repairing or replacing the “concrete prairie,” the con-crete expanse between the library, science building and university center

Impact 2020Advancement team kicks off capital campaign for a better campus

One provision in the Impact 2020 campaign is to raise enough money to name the School of Mathematics and Sciences after renowned surgeon and Wayland alum Dr. Kenneth Mattox, pictured here with his wife, June. Dr. Mattox is Chief of Staff at Ben Taub General Hospital in Houston.

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• Construction of a new weight room for student athletes

• Repairing roofs on the Plainview, Amarillo and San Antonio campuses

• Replacing the main sewer line

• Repairing parking lots

The renovation of the sci-ence building comes with an initiative to name the School of Mathematics and Sciences after Dr. Kenneth Mattox, a 1960 graduate of Wayland who serves as the Chief of Staff and Ben Taub General Hospital in Houston.

Dr. Mattox has received numerous recognitions and awards throughout the years. He is a distinguished Service

Professor of the Micheal E. De-Bakey Department of Surgery at Baylor College of Medicine. He has been a visiting profes-sor or consultant at more than 800 medical schools, hospitals or health care systems. He is a member of 30 professional organizations, is past president of the American Association for the Surgery of Trauma, secre-tary-treasurer of the DeBakey International Surgical Society, past president of the Houston Surgical Society and the Texas Surgical Society. He has been listed in Best Doctors in Amer-ica and Best Doctors in Hous-ton. He has received several distinguished surgeon awards. He has written more than 15 books, 600 scientific articles and “about 1,000 abstracts,”

and has a ground-breaking surgical procedure named after him.

While the Impact 2020 cam-paign does not directly include the construction of a new Bible building, it does incorporate most of what was included in the previous capital campaign initiative that stalled with the waning economy several years ago. University officials said, however, that the Bible building and the School of Religion and Philosophy remain as a future goal. Impact 2020 simply shifts priority focus to those areas that are in need of immediate attention.

For more information about Impact 2020, contact the Offic-es of Advancement at 806-291-3425.

24 footprints

Nathan Burgess already had a clear career choice when

he came from nearby Hale Center to enroll at Wayland in the late 1990s.

A Bachelor of Science degree in biology in 2001 launched him toward a career in physical therapy – a subject he now teaches as Assistant Program Director of the Doctor of Physical Therapy program at the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center in Lubbock.

Burgess, who received his master’s from Texas Tech in 2004 and will earn his Doctor of Science in Physical Therapy next spring, has been on the full-time faculty since 2009. He specializes in neuro rehabilita-tion, working with people who have experienced conditions such as spinal cord injuries, head injuries, stroke, Parkin-son’s and Multiple Sclerosis.

“It’s a very broad field. We’re helping people learn to function again – just moving in bed, walking and re-learning basic skills in many cases. Patients are dealing with permanent life changes. They have lost

their ‘normal’ and we’re helping them create a new normal, how to function with the physical abilities they have,” explained Burgess who is a Neurologic Certified Specialist through the American Physical Therapy Association.

Burgess previously served as Chair of Admissions and Director of Clinical Education for the school, which has 12 full-time faculty.

The entry-level Doctor of Physical Therapy is a three-year program encompassing 100 graduate hours through its teaching sites in Lubbock, Amarillo and Odessa and 36 weeks of full-time clinical in-ternship which occur in loca-tions throughout Texas and the United States. Burgess did his clinical internships in Amarillo, Lubbock, Lockney and Norman,

Okla.“It’s our mission to service

the western half of Texas,” said Burgess, who noted the school presently has about 210 stu-dents in the Doctor of Physical Therapy program. “We get 400-500 applications a year; we have students from every-where, even internationally.

“Specifically, I am develop-ing future healthcare providers, mentoring them from students to health professionals.

“Wayland did a good job of preparing me in those areas,” Burgess said. “Also, it was ben-eficial to have the faith focus Wayland provided. It helped me grow as an individual. College is a very formative period in your life and having friends and faculty of the same spiritual mindset was helpful.”

Burgess and his wife Erin, a Texas Tech graduate and homemaker, have a 5-year-old son, Noah, and are expecting another son in October.

He is the son Gene and Debbie Burgess of Hale Center. His mother works in Financial Aid at Wayland. His sister, Lindsay Burgess, who has two degrees from Wayland, works in Admissions for the Wayland campus in Lubbock.

Why Wayland?Science degree led Burgess to career in physical therapyby DANNY ANDREWSDirector of Alumni Development

Erin, Noah and Nathan Burgess

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Why Wayland?

A former welder who dabbled with the idea of college several

times is living his dream as a 44-year-old, first-year kinder-garten teacher.

Brent Knox, who was born in Lockney and graduated from Plainview High School in 1989, worked with his father, Danny, at D&J Company, manufactur-ing tillage equipment in Plain-view.

“I first thought about going to college to get certified in welding but my dad said I didn’t really need to do that to work for him,” Knox related. “About 10 years later, I thought I might study business management, but I didn’t do so well in high school so I didn’t think I had a chance of making it in college.”

A couple of years after mar-rying the former Tammy Brad-ford, who teaches history in Kress, about 12 miles north of Plainview, she suggested that “if I was going to make a career change, now is the time,” Knox said. A friend, Shelly Walker, who was teaching at Edgemere Elementary at the time, also en-couraged Knox to go to college.

He enrolled at Wayland in 2009, continuing to work

with his father as his schedule allowed. The semester before he began student teaching, he went to work at 4 in the morning so he could get in eight hours on the job, then took afternoon and evening classes.

“I’d rush home to get my homework done, go to bed and start all over the next day. Mike Laas at Plainview Tire, next to my dad’s business, encouraged me quite a bit. When I was thinking of laying out a semes-ter, he told me, ‘You can wake up with a degree or wake up without one. It’s your choice.’ That inspired me to push through,” Knox recalled.

Knox said all of his teachers at Wayland were very sup-portive, especially those in the School of Education.

“I had him for all of his elementary education class-es,” said Linda Murphree, who taught for Wayland after leaving Plainview ISD. “We hit it off in

his introduction to elementary education class. He was a little rough around the edges at first, but really blossomed into a teacher who loved kids.”

Knox landed a job at Edge-mere Elementary, where he is one of only two men on staff, and as he nears the end of his first year, he reflects, “It’s been an experience and I’ve learned a lot. Five- and six-year-olds can teach you a lot of things you don’t even want to know. They don’t have a filter at all,” he said with a laugh.

“I love standing in the hall-way and telling them, ‘Good morning’ and picking on stu-dents in all the grades.”

Teaching reading, writ-ing, math, social studies and science, Knox says he enjoys having a set structure each day and eventually hopes to teach writing to fourth graders. “I had never done much writing but when I was student teaching that really clicked. I didn’t real-ize I liked writing so much.”

Looking back on his college experience, Knox says, “When I first started, I didn’t see how I could ever finish. But when I walked across the stage I couldn’t believe I was already done. I was the first Knox to get a college degree.”

Brent Knox is living his dreamby DANNY ANDREWSDirector of Alumni Development

Brent Knox

Two alumni who graduated two years apart are now leaders on the ministerial

team of a growing church near Kan-sas City, Mo.

Randall Stotts, a 1985 religion major, and Greg Griffin, who re-ceived his BA with a major in religion and minor in philosophy in 1983, now serve as lead pastor and adult ministry pastor, respectively, at First Baptist Church of Blue Springs.

The church, which primarily serves residents of Lees Summit, Independence and Blue Springs with a combined population of about 258,000, recently purchased the facility of Tri-Cities Ministries that includes a large auditorium, class-rooms (the ministry also operated a school), gymnasium and fellowship area with a commercial-sized kitch-en.

“Tri-Cities was having some fi-nancial difficulties and knew we were planning to building a new church. In fact, we had bought property on the south end of Blue Springs and were supposed to start building this year. We were able to save a ton of money by purchasing their property,” Griffin explained. “It was a win-win for both of us. We got about 30,000 more square feet than we planned to build and we had no gymnasium in our plans.”

Blue Springs also has a campus in Grain Valley, which began meet-

ing two years ago in an elementary school about five miles away. Atten-dance at the two churches averages 1,400 to 1,600 each Sunday.

Griffin, a pastor’s son who attend-ed three high schools in four years before coming to Wayland from San Antonio, is in charge of the church’s life groups as well as the men’s min-istry and also personally disciples six men each week.

Thankful for the influence of Way-land religion professors Gary Man-ning, John Mitchell, Ronnie Littlejohn, Ivyloy Bishop and Fred Howard, Griffin served as youth minister at Calvary Baptist in Tulia and then at First Baptist in Olton.

“I began to doubt whether I was really called to ministry so I worked as an admissions counselor at Way-land for two years but got a confir-mation when Travis Hart (a 1968

Wayland graduate who had been pastor in Olton, then moved to FBC Plainview) asked me to be Minister of Single Adults and Recreation at First Baptist in Plainview,” Griffin related.

Although he took courses at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary’s extension center in Lub-bock, Griffin never got a seminary degree. Stotts, a native of Tahoka, graduated from Midwestern Semi-nary in Kansas City.

In 1991, Stotts, Student Pastor at FBC Blue Springs at the time, recommended Griffin to First Baptist Church in Raytown, Mo. as Single Adult Pastor, a post he held for 11 ½ years. In January of 2003, he joined a ministry called Character That Counts and began giving leadership to a ministry under the CTC umbrella called Teaching God’s Infinite Wis-dom (TGIW). TGIW currently has 120-150 men from several denomi-nations in Bible study each week at their Lees Summit locations.

He also produces a quarterly newsletter for Character That Counts which was started by Rod Handley, a former vice president of Fellowship of Christian Athletes. “Rod was born in Lockney (15 miles east of Plainview) and still has family there but grew up in Washington,” Griffin said.

Six or seven years ago, Griffin began attending First Baptist-Blue Springs to which Stotts had returned as pastor after serving at Hoffman-town Baptist Church in Albuquerque, N.M. and helping found Sagebrush, now a megachurch in that city.

Alums team up in MissouriWBU graduates Randall Stotts, Greg Griffin working together to lead congregation at First Baptist Church of Blue Springsby DANNY ANDREWSDirector of Alumni Development

Greg Griffin (left) and Randall Stotts

26 footprints

Why Wayland?

“Randall came back to Blue Springs about 10 years ago when the church was in dire straits. It was running only about 350-400 in attendance and has more than qua-drupled in size. When we joined, the church just felt like home and I got engaged in ministry. They liked what I was doing in ministering to men and asked me to come on staff on a half-time basis.

“Randall is an excellent preacher, teacher and leader,” Griffin added.

Looking back on his Wayland experience, Griffin recalled, “I grad-uated from high school in a class of 600 and probably didn’t know five of them. But my whole life changed when I showed up at Wayland. I came out of my shell and got very involved in a lot of areas. I even ran track one year.

“I was involved with the Bap-tist Student Ministries when David Kemmerling was director. I began to realize potential I didn’t know was there. Literally hours after Wichita Falls had a terrible tornado, I went with several other students to take a couple of van loads of stuff to help people down there. I saw there were many ministry opportunities.

“Also, Dave Sylvester, the student minister at First Baptist, took several of us under his wing and started dis-cipling us. That’s my deepest pas-sion to disciple men and help them become disciple makers.”

Griffin has been on mission to Venezuela and would like to go to London where Blue Springs has placed a current staff member and his family as long-term missionaries, hoping they are the first of many the church can put on the mission field.

“They are working with Hindus, Muslims, Jews and Christians from many countries,” Griffin said.

He and his wife Sharon, who has

an associate’s degree from Wayland and is assistant to the Assistant Su-perintendent for Elementary Educa-tion in the Lees Summit district, have a son, Kyle of Springfield, Mo., and daughter, Kayla House of Topeka, and five grandchildren ranging from two months to 3 years.

Stotts and his wife, Donna, a native of Post who was a secretary at First Baptist-Plainview and now teaches high school biology, have two children. Ashley Kennedy is a missionary in Capetown, South Af-rica, with her husband, Jason. They have four children. Son Brooks is a seminary student and youth pastor.

“My experience at Wayland was about relationships,” related Stotts, who served at First Baptist in Lock-ney and First Baptist in Hereford before moving to Missouri.

“Dr. Manning, Dr. Bishop, (long-time staff member) Joe Provence and others began shaping doctrine and theology for us. Even today, I still have notes that I refer to, at times, from classes taken at Wayland from those disciple makers in my life.

“Our passion for people who live their lives away from Jesus began at Wayland and First Baptist Church of Plainview. It was modeled for me as the normal Christian life and even today ‘we are not ashamed of the Gospel’ as it continues to give life to my family and those who do not know Jesus.

“God used individuals to teach me how to know Jesus and continue to fall in love with Him while at Way-land. Jay Kelly, Johnny Castro, Ken-ny Dickenson and Ricky Cavitt were great mentors for me during that time by watching them and simply copying what they did in their relationship with Jesus. At that time, when they were young men, they had an enormous passion for Jesus that I had never

witnessed. I learned so much from those guys.

“I will always be indebted to Stacey Conner (now pastor of First Baptist Muleshoe) who befriended Donna and me and was a constant source of encouragement to follow Jesus. He exhibited a love for Jesus that was so contagious and compel-ling for me,” Stotts continued.

“It really has all been about God and Him drawing people to Himself. Donna and I were very much bene-ficiaries of people taking serious II Timothy 2 and teaching us how to know Jesus and make him known. We both are who we are, in large part, to Wayland and those who were following hard after Christ and loving us during those days.

“One of the greatest gifts in our lives has been our relationship with Greg and Sharon Griffin. Donna and I love doing life with them. To be able to work with an intimate friend of so many years has been a gift that only God could give. He is an incredible leader of people and a true disciple maker. They might be the greatest gift that Wayland has given to us over the years.

“(Evangelist/teacher/Wayland alum) Bruce Ammons is another close friend. His ministry in our lives has been invaluable. Even though time and distance separates much of these relationships, I still carry their investment in our lives and they shape our ministry even today.

“God is doing a great work around us. It is very humbling to watch Him draw people to Himself and to allow us to be part of it... it is the ‘abundant life’ that is only found in Christ. Because of Scripture that was opened to us while at Wayland, we have pursued a life that has been full of risk-taking for God’s glory and the salvation of many.” Stotts said.

footprints 27

During the four years I spent on the Plainview campus

while earning my bachelor’s degree, I spent as much time as possible with my history professors – sitting in their offices and discussing class, the pro-fession of history, graduate school, and life in general.

I wanted to be one of them so badly I could hardly wait to graduate and get moving! When I did cross the stage to receive my diploma from Wayland’s then-new president, Dr. Paul Armes, he told me to go get my education and come home.

Twelve years later, I returned to Plainview to interview for my dream job – a member of the Wayland fac-ulty. Even though I’d been gone for over a decade, I immediately felt at home on campus and with the faculty and staff of the School of Behavioral and Social Sciences.

Of course, it didn’t hurt that many of the faces that greeted me were familiar and oh, so dear. After being offered, and accepting, the position as assistant professor of history, I traveled to the third floor of Gates Hall to pick out my office.

I cannot even express the joy and satisfaction that flooded my soul as I realized that I’d met my goal. I’d come home. The following August, I moved to Plainview, along with the husband, son, cat, and two graduate degrees I’d collected along the way.

Here are just a few of the reasons why I teach at Wayland:

I just fit at Wayland. I felt that the

first time I stepped on campus, as a 15-year-old visiting her older sister, and I’ve never felt any other way. To misquote a song from a few years ago, Wayland “feels like home to me.” I want to help young people, whether they come from a similar

background to mine or something entirely different, find that fit -- and that family -- for themselves.

I have fantas-tic memories of Wayland. These memories include falling in love with

a dark-eyed giant, Ryan Crowe, from East Texas. We are so thrilled to be raising our 5-year-old son, Wes, in the shadow of the same buildings that harbored our young dreams. I also made friends at Wayland that continue to be tremendously import-ant in my life. Many of those friends were peers, but some of them were/are faculty and staff at Wayland who kept up with me through all my trav-els WITHOUT the benefit of social media. I want to be that professor that students remember and return to visit. I want to stay in touch with grad-uates when they leave, continuing to care about and pray for their lives.

I received an outstanding educa-tion at Wayland. When I left, fresh diploma in hand, I was prepared for graduate school and, more impor-tantly, for life, thanks to the lessons

I’d learned in and out of the class-room at Wayland. I am so honored to now be a part of that opportunity for our current and future students. I want to provide Wayland students with the BEST education I can, but also be a safe, loving presence that students can trust and confide in when life gets rocky and tough deci-sions need to be made.

Wayland and the world have changed since my undergraduate days. I see great opportunity in the new reality faced by Christian higher education in general and Wayland in particular and want to be involved in the discussion about how to main-tain Wayland’s historic purpose and Christian distinction while adjusting to the present situation.

Wayland is in a time of transition. Both the dean of my school, the incomparable Dr. Estelle Owens, and the president of our university, Dr. Paul Armes, are retiring at the end of June. While I will greatly miss having these two wise individuals around on a daily basis, I am also excited to see what the future holds for Wayland and committed to being a part of that future.

(Dr. Crowe also has served on the Young Alumni Board and has written alumni profiles for a monthly e-mailed alumni newsletter. She and her husband Ryan, teach a young adult Sunday school class at First Baptist Church-Plainview.)

Why Wayland?

Rebekah Crowe choosing to live her dream as a Wayland professor

Crowe

28 footprints

Dr. Wayland’s granddaughter dies at 91

Mary Joyce Dean Adams, 91, granddaugh-ter of Wayland founder Dr. J.H. Wayland and his wife Sarah, passed away Sunday, April 3, 2016, in Glen Rose.

Mrs. Adams was born July 12, 1924, in Plainview to Ernest “Bull” and Mabel Wayland Adams. She was delivered

by her grandfather, a long-time Plainview physician.

She worked for 50 years, mostly for the federal government. Mary owned and helped build a private airport in Austin called The Bird’s Nest, which is now Austin Execu-tive Airport.

From 1979 to 1999, she faithfully cared for her mother, who lived at home and reached the age of 109. She was very involved in church, political and community activities.

According to her obitu-ary, Mrs. Adams “enjoyed her yard, flowers, First Baptist Church, mission trips, helping with youth camp and Bible School and sharing the truth of her Heavenly Father. So many people from so many

generations have been inspired and blessed and prayed for by her. To her dying day she was praying for and blessing others.”

Survivors include: her much loved former brother-in-law, Rudy Meyers and companion, Beverly Rain-bolt; nieces, Suzanne Ad-ams Carter and husband, David and children: Tra-lissa Carter Griffin, BA’86, and husband David, BA’84; Jennifer Carter Ralston, BA’89, and husband, James; Amy Carter Myers. BA’94 and husband, Jay, BA’96; Cynthia Adams Ar-mour and husband, Liebert (deceased) and children: Phillip Armour and wife, Mindy, Deborah Armour, Beth Armour Armstrong and husband, Chris; neph-ew, Sandy (W.G.) Adams (deceased) and wife, Sha-ron and children: Loretta Adams, Sandra Adams Whitfield and husband, Moose, Ernest Adams, Wayland G. Adams, III and Chelsae Hay; great-great-nieces and nephews, cousins and a host of close loving friends.

Memorials can be sent to Missions at First Bap-tist Church-Glen Rose or Wayland Baptist University, 1900 W. Seventh, CMB 1295, Plainview, TX 79072

WBU gets grant for youth program

Wayland Baptist University has received a $600,000 grant from Lilly

Endowment Inc.’s High School Youth Theology Institutes initiative to help fund Kaleo, a program designed to foster Chris-tian leadership among high school juniors and seniors.

Designed by Wayland’s Associate Dean of the School of Religion and Phi-losophy, Dr. Clinton Lowin, the Kaleo program’s goal is to “transform lives through discovery, discernment and affirmation of God’s call for Christian leadership in the lives of junior and senior high school students.”

“This grant is one of the most exciting things that has happened to the School of Religion and Philosophy in our history,” said Dr. Paul Sadler, Dean of the School of Religion. “It has tremendous poten-tial to influence the lives of Christian young people, and it also gives churches

and Wayland an opportuni-ty to form very productive partnerships.”

Lowin said he had been in discussion with leaders at the Baptist General Convention of Texas and other organizations who expressed a growing interest in trying to find a way to help more students consider the call of God on their lives, not only prepar-ing them for service to the church, but also within their communities.

Funded by the Lilly Endowment grant, Lowin was able to design an im-mersion program through which Wayland partners with local churches, Camp Eagle and Student Interna-tional to provide students with an experience that focuses on the heart, head and hands to foster the call to kingdom work.

Adams

News in Brief

The Wayland Enactus team won its Regional Competition in Dallas on April 4 and will represent the School of Business at the National Championships in St. Louis on May 15-18. Team members are: (front, from left) Virginia Norwood, Kesley Gittens, Enactus Sponsor Dr. Barry Evans, Myra Franco, Isabel Morales and Chelsa Ball (back) Anthony Minjares, Keaton Vawter, Enactus President Cody Lindberg, and Jedediah Hedlund.

footprints 29

30 footprints

News in Brief

School of Music hires new faculty

The School of Music has announced the hiring of two new faculty mem-bers who will strengthen the university’s choir and band programs.

Dr. Steven Weber, who spent the past 24 years as Director of Choral Activi-ties at Amarillo College, has been named Director of Choir and Professor of Choral Edu-cation. Weber earned his doctorate from Arizona State University in 1992. He also holds master’s degrees from ASU as well as The Catholic University of America, and a bache-lor’s degree from Lebanon Valley College.

Carl Rowles has been named Director of Bands and Assistant Professor of Instrumental Educa-tion. Rowles is serving as the interim director of the Monmouth College Wind Ensemble while completing his Doctor of Musical Arts

degree at the University of Iowa. He is on course to complete his degree in May. Rowles holds a master’s degree from Tennessee Technological University and a bachelor’s from Simpson College.

Trustees approve General Studies

Wayland Baptist Uni-versity has developed a new Bachelor of General Studies degree that will be offered in the fall of 2016.

The Bachelor of Gener-al Studies provides oppor-tunities for students who are interested in combining a liberal arts background with some degree of con-centration.

Students will take Wayland’s general core then choose two concen-trations with an option for a third. Concentrations are available in art, business administration, communi-cation, education, environ-mental science, environ-mental studies, exercise and sport science, graphic design, history, justice administration, media communication, political science, psychology, so-ciology and theatre.

Family endows scholarship

The family and friends of Ken and the late Mary Owens Sharpe gathered in February to dedicate a new scholarship in their name.

The Ken and Mary Owens Sharpe Endowed Scholarship will provide scholarships for students studying to become teach-ers in the social sciences and servant-leaders.

Ken dedicated his life to the justice system, serving for 42 years as a court re-porter for the state of Okla-homa. Mary, the sister of Wayland history professor-Dr. Estelle Owens, spent 40 years as the pastor’s secretary at Village Baptist Church.

Born in Buna, Tex-as, Mary graduated from Jasper High School and earned a degree in elementary education from Wayland in 1969. She taught fifth grade at College Hill Elementary in Plainview before marrying Ken in 1973 and moving to Oklahoma City.

Superintendent program online

Wayland is starting an online program for educa-tors interested in obtaining a superintendent certifica-tion. Delivered complete-ly online, this program provides certification for prospective superintendent candidates while allowing working administrators the freedom to complete the program without disrupting their daily responsibilities.

The certification pro-gram will cover five spe-cialized classes: school plant and facilities; leader-ship and the change pro-cess; school improvement and educational reform; politics, governance and finance of education; and the superintendent practicum. The program is designed for practicing administrators.

Weber

Rowles

The Owens and Sharpe families gathered for the dedication of the Ken and Mary Owens Sharpe Endowed Scholarship to benefit a future teacher in the social sciences. Pictured are (from left) Dr. Estelle Owens, Mary’s sister; Amanda and Jake Owens (a nephew) and son Jack; Dr. Paul Armes, WBU President; and Ken Sharpe.

footprints 31

News in Brief

For more information, call 806-742-9516 or email tim.powers@wbu.edu.

History program recognized

Wayland’s Master of Arts in History program has been recognized among the “10 Most Affordable Online History Master’s Degrees 2016” by Best-MastersDegrees.com. Wayland placed sixth on the list.

Best Masters Degrees put together a compre-hensive list of universities offering master’s degrees in history online and then determined the cost of attending based on tuition and fees. The group also looked at Wayland’s flex-ibility in offering a handful of core courses as well as numerous topics of study from American history to Biblical history, and more.

Science students earn awards

Three students from the School of Mathematics and Sciences at Wayland were awarded for their presenta-tions at the Texas Acade-my of Science meeting in Junction in March.

Lauryn Bruggink, a senior from Oak Creek, Colo., won second place Overall Undergraduate Research Presentation and the Terrestrial Ecolo-gy Section Award for the best presentation in that

section. Bruggink’s presen-tation was entitled “Winter Habitat Use of Longspurs (Calcarius spp.) and Other Winter Grassland Birds in hale and Floyd County, Texas.”

Jake Brozek, a senior from Bovina, and Mayra Herrera-Gonzales, a junior from Plainview, won the best presentation award in the Neuroscience Section for their work entitled, “Salt Addiction is Mediated by Encephalic Vasopressin.”

More than 100 pre-sentations were given by research students from across the state.

Boyer inducted into Hall of Fame

Dr. Richard Boyer, pro-fessor of business and so-cial sciences for Wayland

Baptist Univer-sity’s online pro-grams, has been selected for induc-tion into the Army

Officer Candidate School (OCS) Hall of Fame. The ceremony was held on April 26 in Columbus, GA.

The OCS Hall of Fame is intended to honor gradu-ates of the OCS who have distinguished themselves in military or civilian pur-suits. Captain Boyer was

commissioned a Military Intelligence Officer upon graduation from the OCS. Boyer left active duty in 1967 and continued to serve as a reserve officer. His final assignment came in 1971 as a military intel-ligence evaluator for the First U.S. Army Evaluation Team.

Dr. Boyer distinguished himself for induction into the Hall of Fame as an attorney, judge, state representative and senator, party chairman, educa-tor and civic leader. After graduating law school in 1972, he achieved dis-tinction as an attorney and was included in “Best Lawyers in America.” Upon his election to the New Hampshire State Senate he was dubbed as one of the “fastest rising political stars.” His preeminence as a national political leader was enhanced with his election as Chairman of the State’s Democratic Party and underlined by his inclusion in New Hamp-shire Notables as one of the decade’s significant leaders.

In 1992 Dr. Boyer left the courtroom for aca-demia, serving as law school dean, dean of education for a private college, and president of a private university. In 2001 Dr. Boyer joined Wayland where he is in his 15th year having achieved the rank of professor.

Daniel Brown earns doctorate

Daniel Brown, who has worked at Wayland for eight years, recently received his Doctor of Mu-sical Arts degree from the University of Memphis.

Brown earned a Bach-elor of Music from the University of Alabama-Bir-mingham and a Master of Music from the University of Alabama and an associ-ate’s degree from Wallace State Community College in Hanceville, Ala.

He currently is Direc-tor of the BAS-BCM (Bachelor of Applied Science and Bachelor

of Christian Ministry) Office after serving as a recruiter in the Admissions Office, then an evaluator, Office Manager and Coordinator of Operations for BAS-BCM.

He was instrumental in designing the scholarship program being offered to correctional employees, their spouse and depen-dent children in the Texas prison system.

Brown and his wife, Dr. Kimberly Brown, Director of Vocal Studies at Wayland, have two children – Han-nah, 4, and Luke, 2.

Brown

Boyer

32 footprints

Sports Briefs

Women’s track wins NAIA title

Brian Whitlock said it might have been the best day in the history of Way-land Baptist athletics, and the Pioneer track and field teams – as usual – were a huge part of it.

On a day when the men’s and women’s basketball teams both played for conference championships, a pitcher threw the sixth no-hitter in WBU baseball history, and swimmers and wrestlers represented well at na-tional competitions, it was another national title by the women’s track and field team – and another second for the men – that was the cherry on top of it all!

“It’s a special day,” Whitlock said.

Led by Most Valuable Performer Rochene Smith,

the WBU women pulled out of a four-team chase to finish in first place at the NAIA Indoor Track & Field National Championships, scoring 72 points. Doane, Neb., was second with 61½, followed by defend-ing champion Indiana Tech with 61 and Siena Heights, Mich., with 59½.

It’s the sixth indoor national title – and first since 2009 – for Wayland’s women, who also have won three outdoor crowns, including last year. Way-land placed third at indoors in 2015.

Basketball teams rank in final poll

The Wayland Bap-tist Flying Queens were ranked 17th – their highest final ranking in a dozen years – and the Pioneers were the equivalent of 29th

in the NAIA Division I Bas-ketball Coaches’ Postsea-son Top 25 polls.

Both WBU teams dropped in the rankings after first-round exits in their respective national tournaments.

The Queens went from 11th to 17th, which is their best postseason ranking since the 2003-04 team finished 14th. Third-year coach Alesha Robert-son-Ellis’s team went 25-5, the program’s most victo-ries in a season since the 1998-99 team went 28-6 and advanced to the sec-ond round of the national tournament. The Queens also won their first-ever Sooner Athletic Confer-ence regular-season and second-ever tournament championship.

The Pioneers, under first-year coach Ty Harrel-

son, finished the equivalent of 29th in the men’s poll. Harrelson’s team finished with a 21-12 record, repeated as SAC Tour-nament champions, and earned an automatic bid to the national tournament.

Players named scholar athletes

Four Wayland Bap-tist basketball players – Stephanie Afunugo for the Flying Queens and Ruben Lopez, Thiago Randazzo and Maurice Redmond for the Pioneers – have been named 2016 Daktron-ics-NAIA Scholar-Athletes.

In order to be nominat-ed by an institution’s head coach or sports information director, a student-athlete must maintain a minimum grade point average of 3.5 on a 4.0 scale and must have achieved at least

footprints 33

Sports Briefs

junior academic status.

It’s the second year for Afunugo, a senior sports medicine and reha-bilitation major from Plano, to receive the NAIA Schol-ar-Athlete honor. She led the No. 11 Flying Queens in scor-ing (12.8 ppg) and steals (53) and was second in rebounds (6.9) this season when she joined the pro-gram’s

1,000-point club, ending her career with 1,206 points to rank 26th. She earned All-Sooner Athletic Conference honors the past three seasons, includ-ing first team this year.

Lopez, Randazzo and Redmond are all juniors.

A 5-8 guard, Lopez averaged 2.12 points and collected 20 assists, 13 rebounds and nine steals while appearing in 25 games. He hit 13-of-32 3-pointers (41 percent). Lopez is a fitness manage-ment major from El Paso.

Randazzo, a 6-foot-5 business marketing/man-agement major from Brasil-ia, Brazil, appeared in only three games this season, averaging 8.3 points and 4.7 rebounds, before suffering a season-ending injury.

A 6-3 business major from Channelview, Texas, Redmond was second on the team in scoring (15.5 ppg) and total steals (57) and was the lead-ing rebounder (6.5). He shot 53 percent from the field, including 50-of-140 3-pointers, and 86-of-113 (76 percent) free throws. Redmond was named All-SAC honorable men-tion and made the All-SAC Tournament team.

Mensah working toward Olympics

Wayland Baptist redshirt wrestler Tamyra Mensah narrowly lost in her semifinal match at the 1st Olympic Games World Qualifying Tournament in Mongolia in April, denying her a spot in the 2016 Olympic Games…but with one shot left.

Mensah recently won

the U.S. Olympic Trials in Iowa but still needs to qual-ify her weight (69 kg/152 lbs.) for the United States at the Olympics to be held later this year in Rio de Ja-neiro. After failing to qualify her weight for the U.S. at the Pan American Qualifier in Frisco in March, Mensah was hoping to get the job done at the Buyant-Uhaa Sports Arena in Mongolia, where the top two finishers advance to the Olympics.

She easily won her opening-round match over Kaur Navjot, India’s five-time World Team member, 10-0, before taking on Go-zal Zutova of Azerbaijan in the quarterfinals. Mensah won that, 10-7.

That advanced Mensah into the semifinal against Ilana Kratysh of Israel, with the winner advancing to the final and earning a spot

in the Olympics.Mensah took an early

2-0 lead with a single-leg takedown right out of the gate and led it 3-2 after the first round.

A headlock for Kratysh put Mensah down 6-3 with two minutes left. It ap-peared Mensah recorded a takedown, but it was ruled a slip and no points were awarded. Mensah picked up one step-out point with 28 seconds left, and she managed to pick up one more but ultimately fell to the Israeli, 6-5.

A tweet by USA Wres-tling stated: “Cannot believe they took away her takedown late in the match. Wow.”

The redshirt junior from Katy, Texas, who represents Titan Mercury Wrestling Club of Califor-nia, has one more crack at qualifying during the World Olympic Qualifying Tourna-ment to be held May 6-8 in Istanbul, Turkey.

Wayland fourth in Learfield Cup

At the conclusion of the winter standings, Wayland Baptist finds itself in fourth place out of 172 schools in the NAIA Learfield Di-rectors’ Cup. WBU stood second after the first set of winter standings before points were awarded for men’s and women’s bas-ketball.

The Learfield Directors’

Afunugo

Lopez

Randazzo

Redmond

Mensah

34 footprints

Sports Briefs

Cup awards points based on schools’ national finish-es in up to 12 sports – six women’s and six men’s. Wayland finished an all-time best fourth in the competition last season.

Golfers second, Harp honored

Wayland overcame Texas Wesleyan to finish in second place, and three Pioneers finished in the top 10 individually – including Player of the Year Andrew

Wil-liamson – at the Sooner Athletic Confer-ence Men’s Golf Champi-

onships played at Water-chase Golf Club in Fort Worth.

After turning in rounds of 286 and 290, the second-ranked Pioneers shot a final round 283 to overtake seventh-ranked Texas Wesleyan (290-283-288—861) by two shots.

Williamson, a sopho-more from South Africa, wound up in third place after shooting his second consecutive 3-under 69. Williamson scrambled for seven birdies and four bogeys and shot 3-under 33 on the back-nine. Com-bined with his first-round

72, Williamson – last year’s SAC Freshman of the Year when he tied for 13th place – turned in a 6-under 210, seven shots out of second place.

Junior Steven Diack, who opened with a 72 and a 76, shot a 68 on day two, and finished in seventh place out of 58 golfers.

Senior Ian Ansett tied for eighth place (69-76-73—218), a shot in front of sophomore George Scan-lon. Freshman Dean Martin tied for 16th.

Wayland Baptist Uni-versity coach Tom Harp was named Sooner Athletic Conference Coach of the Year.

Women’s golfer second in SAC

Wayland Baptist shot a 314 on the second day to move past Texas Wesleyan and finish in second place at the Sooner Athletic Conference Women’s Golf Championships held at Waterchase Golf Club in Fort Worth.

Fifth-ranked Oklahoma City took the title by 26 shots, shooting rounds of 299 and 305 for a 604 total.

Marina Gallegos, a sophomore from Spain, tied for third place overall,.

WBU junior Natalia Ugalde tied for seventh in the 42-golfer field.

WBU senior Hannah

Duvall, the defending champion, tied for 11th place. Ashley Zang was alone in 17th while sopho-more Kodee Rhodes was 27th.

Baseball team riding success

With one Sooner Athletic Conference series with Mid-America Christian remaining at press time, the Pioneer baseball team stood 38-14, just two wins away from becoming the sixth team in school history to win 40 or more games.

Milestones this season have been a sweep of for-mer SAC archrival Lubbock Christian by scores of 8-5, 10-8 and 4-3 and two wins over perennial powerhouse Oklahoma City on the road.

Coach Brad Bass passed the 600-win mile-stone at Wayland in his 21st season at the helm.

OCU hosts the SAC Tournament May 6-9. The winner automatically quali-fies as one of 45 teams for the NAIA National Cham-pionship Opening Round, while non-automatic qualifi-ers must gain entry with an at-large bid.

Greg Feris to join NACDA Hall

Dr. Greg Feris, director of athletics at Wayland from 1990-2014, will be inducted into the National Association of College

Directors of Athletics Hall of Fame.

Induction ceremonies will be from 12:45-2:15 p.m. June 14 at the Hilton Anatole in Dallas.

When Feris started at Wayland, the university only offered six sports:

basketball, cross coun-try, and track and field for men and women. Today, Wayland has 21 sports programs

– adding golf, soccer, wres-tling, and swimming and diving for men and women as well as volleyball, base-ball, football and cheer and dance. The student-athlete population has exploded from approximately 75 when Feris took over to today’s total close to 500.

Feris started the Way-land Athletics Hall of Honor in 1991 and was inducted in 2009. He also created the Harley Redin Coaching Award.

He was inducted into the NAIA Hall of Fame in 2007 and was named Under Armour Athletics Director of the Year three times.

Feris and his wife, Glenda, live in Nemo, near Glen Rose.

Harp

Feris

footprints 35

Sports Briefs

Winning a title was nothing new for Genesis Veliz –

she had done it before. What was new was winning a nation-al title for Wayland’s 3-year-old diving program. Veliz competed at the NAIA Swimming and Diving National Championships in Columbus, GA, in March, winning the title in the 1-meter competition.

Veliz, a sophomore from Venezuela, started diving when she was 15 years old. It was a natural progression for a girl who had been involved in gymnastics and tumbling since she was 3.

“My mom saw me all the time in my house, doing balls and rolls and handstands, and she was crazy with me,” said Veliz in her heavy Venezuelan accent. The 21-year-old has been speaking English for only two years. “She would go to the club and ask if I can start with gymnastics.”

Veliz switched from gymnas-tics to diving when she was 15 years old. The only difference, she said, was remembering to enter the water head first.

“Everything in gymnastics is your leg. Everything,” she said.

Veliz adapted rather quickly and won national champion-ships a year later. She has won Venezuelan nationals in the 1-meter, 2-meter and 10-meter platform, and she qualified for the diving World Cup in 2012. Her current goal is to make the 2020 Venezuelan Olympic team.

The diminutive diver came to the United States in 2014 to dive for Oklahoma Baptist University. She transferred to

Wayland a year later when she couldn’t secure a financial aid package that would keep her at OBU. Wayland offered her a scholarship.

“For international students, the money is so helpful,” she said.

Veliz said the move to the United States has been a bit of a culture shock. In Venezuela, she lived near the capital city of Caracas. She was used to the big city atmosphere with big

Veliz is Wayland’s firstSophomore claims national title in divingby JONATHAN PETTYDirector of Communications

Genesis Veliz, a sophomore from Venezuela, is Wayland’s first-ev-er national champion diver. Veliz won the 1-meter NAIA diving competition in March.

see CHAMP, page 45

36 footprints

Baptist Student Ministries

Donnie BrownDirectorBaptist Student Ministries

“I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit,

while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.

“I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. If you re-main in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.” John 15: 1-8

This semester we have focused on the Gospel of John, in particular John 15: 1-17. Our Leadership Team has memorized this passage and focused on remaining in Christ and allowing Him to produce fruit in our lives. We have stressed ways to remain in Christ by personal Bible study, church involvement, Sabbath rest, scripture memory, prayer and other spiritual disciplines. John 15:7 states that if we remain in Him, and His word remains in us, we can ask whatever we wish and it will be done for us. One thing we continue to pray for is our lost friends and classmates to come to Christ. This semester we saw seven of them put their faith in Christ. That brings the total profession of faith among Wayland stu-dents to 14 for the year. We praise God

for these and continue to disciple them and ask for more new believers. God also answered our prayers through our Disci-ple Now teams. They served in five differ-ent churches. They saw nine teenagers give their lives to Christ and encouraged hundreds of teenagers to continue to live for Jesus.

During Spring Break, we took 37 to South Padre to participate in Beach Reach. We have been doing Beach Reach for several years, but this year’s was by far the best. We took the largest group that we have ever taken. We joined about 800 other students from across Tex-as and worked together to advance the Kingdom of God. A total 154 people gave their life to Christ and our students were able to lead eight of those to faith. It was a tremendous experience and great honor to see God answer our prayers.

On June 11-25, 2016, we will have a team of 20 athletes in Kenai and Soldot-na, Alaska, sharing the love of Christ us-ing sports camps. We will be conducting football and volleyball the first week and basketball and soccer the second week. We will have the privilege to share Christ with more than 200 kids and their parents. Please join us in praying for a harvest. Alaska is a very beautiful place but very dark spiritually.

God is at work on our campus. I am amazed every day that I get to partner with God and with you in reaching college students for Christ. Thank you for your partnership in the Gospel and please continue to pray that we continue to make disciples who make disciples.

Remain in Christ and great things will happen

“

My command

is this: Love each

other as I have

loved you.

Greater love has

no one than this:

to lay down one’s

life for one’s

friends.

John 15:12-13

“

footprints 37

Wayland Mission Center

Dr. Richard ShawDirector

Wayland Mission Center

2016 Mission Tripsn Netherlands Antilles,

an island nation off the coast of Venezuela

n Harlingen and Brownsville

n Kenyan Macedonia and

Kosova

All of the Wayland Mission Center’s global missions are open to all WBU students and others committed to sharing the love of Jesus Christ. If interested, contact Dr. Rick Shaw at shawr@wbu.edu.

The work of the Wayland Mission Center—in Plainview, in the cities of Detroit and Dearborn,

in the state of Texas, and in the world—is best described as part of a greater un-dertaking of followers of Jesus Christ—as movemental. The legacy of past genera-tions, encapsulated by the mission greats of Lottie Moon and Annie Armstrong, is now seen in students from different gener-ations, learning and practicing evangelism and incarnational ministry in all of these locations. Let’s examine exactly how this is happening.

Our three mission groups—Apostolos, Kerygma, and Diakonia—are discov-ering and meeting needs of divergent populations. Apostolos, now in its eighth year, has grown to mentor students from Plainview High School, Plainview Christian High School, Estacado Middle School, and Coronado Middle School. Students from these four schools gather each Thursday for tutoring, life-coaching, games, food, and fellowship, and are motivated to stay in school and identify and develop their God-given intelligence, talents, and skills.

The second mission organization, Kerygma, is working to proclaim the Good News of Jesus Christ through the annual Spring Fiesta, held at the Broadway Street Park in Plainview. This city-wide, local out-reach is designed to present the Gospel in word and deed, through proclamation, games, food, crafts, and fund.

The third mission organization, Diako-nia, ministers weekly to the offenders at the Formby Unit east of Plainview. Follow-ing the missional command of Jesus to visit those in prison, this group of students engages local churches to provide ministry to the 1,600+ offenders at the unit.

The fifth annual mission to the cities of Detroit and Dearborn, Michigan, ren-dered at least 54 decisions for Jesus

Christ, through door-to-door evangelism, neighborhood clean-up, and for the first time, clean water distribution in the city of Flint. Reverend Doctor Robert Coverson, pastor of the Meditation Missionary Baptist Church in Detroit, expressed his apprecia-tion for the Wayland Mission Center team thus, “I just wanted to take a moment and thank you again for the fabulous manner in which you and your team blessed our church family a few weeks ago. We are still reaping benefits from it. Since your visit, we have had thirteen people join our church, and nine as baptismal candidates. Keep up the good work and we pray for you always.”

Summer mission opportunities include the first trip to the island nations of the Netherlands Antilles. The WMC will take 10 mission volunteers to work alongside local congregations in Aruba and Curaçao.

We will be partnering with Pastor Jason Smith and members of the College Heights Baptist Church to do mission in Harlingen and Brownsville. Wayland students will engage in Vacation Bible School, sports camp, and church building construction.

Our annual trip to Kenya will take place in late June and early July. We will work in Limuru, Kakamega, and Bungoma, alongside Wayland Kenya graduates in those cities.

Our fourth trip of the summer will be to Macedonia, Kosova, and Greece. A team of 27 will be working in Skopje, Gllumo-va, and Shuto-Orizari, with churches and Christians of Macedonian, Albanian, Ro-many, and Serbian backgrounds. The final component of this trip will be to trace the route of the Apostle Paul on his second missionary journey through Greece.

The movement is underway! Move-mental.

Movemental!

38 footprints

I have recently felt as if I were back at The Plainview Herald after writ-ing a lot of stories for this edition

of Footprints. I told several people I was afraid I’d

get carpel tunnel syndrome just from writing retirement stories.

Hank Williams Jr.’s “All My Rowdy Friends Have Settled Down” has been swirling through my cranial Ipod as I contemplate the departure of some dear friends – President Dr. Paul Armes, Dean of the School of Social and Behavioral Sciences Dr. Estelle Owens, Dean of Students Tom Hall, University Store Manager Eddie Turner, religion professor Dr. Glyndle Feagin, and Coordinator of Accounts Payable Lena Morphis.

Come to think of it, none of them are very rowdy but they are some of the best people I know. Of course, I’ll see one of the retirees pretty often – my wife, Carolyn, who has been Dr. Armes’ assistant his entire 15 years at Way-land.

With a combined 185 years of service, all of them have enriched this university in many and unique ways and will be greatly missed.

Congratulations to Dr. Bobby Hall on his selection as 13th president of Wayland. We pray God’s blessings as he continues his long legacy of service to this University.

****Elsewhere in this issue, you can

read about “Impact 20/20,” a capital campaign for several much-needed campus improvements.

It’s pretty sobering to me that all buildings but the Laney Center, Jimmy Dean Hall and Davis Women’s Dorm

are 35 years and older – many of them quite a bit older.

There’s nothing fancy in this $14 million campaign, just a lot of areas that need replacing, remodeling or updating.

We’re simply asking all Wayland alumni, faculty, staff and friends to prayerfully consider what you can do within your family budget – perhaps giv-ing more by spreading your gift out over three to five years, if necessary.

A total of $28 a month – about the cost of two people eating out these days – over three years is $1,004. That’s a pretty nice gift that a lot of alums can make – maybe through a monthly credit card debit. Some can do much more, some can’t hit that mark but all can do something. And all gifts are appreciated.

It’s time to “pay it forward” and pro-vide better facilities for a new genera-tion of students.

I’m on board and hope you will be, too. We look forward to hearing from you.

****It’s been a terrific year for our athlet-

ic teams and many individuals as well but our recent Recognition Chapel was a great reminder of how many of our students excel in the classroom in all disciplines.

Many are doing significant research and projects, individually and collabora-tively, presenting papers and devotedly preparing for their future endeavors by giving their very best academically.

We salute each of them for carrying high the torch of educational excel-lence.

Blessings on each of you. Have a great summer.

Retirement, fundraising and student success

Thinking Out Loud

Danny AndrewsDirector of Alumni Development

“

With a com-

bined 185 years

of service, all of

(the retirees) have

enriched this

university in many

and unique ways

and will be greatly

missed.

“

footprints 39

Christian love and sympathy is extended to the family and friends of these members of the Wayland family.

Trustees/FacultyStaff/Friends

DR. JOHN ‘JACK’ GIB-SON, former professor of speech at Wayland in the 1960s, died Dec. 28, 2015, in Lubbock, at age 87. A U.S. Air Force veteran, he was a former announcer for the Armed Forces Radio Network and later worked at KFYO radio and KCBD-TV in Lubbock. He also taught radio, television and speech at Texas Tech and the University of Texas at Ar-lington. He and his late wife, Ceclia, were married for more than 60 years. Surviving are a son, a daughter, a half-brother and three grandchildren.

Fidelia Ann Henderson, moth-er of Wayland football coach BUTCH HENDERSON, died Feb. 4, 2016, in Artesia, N.M. at age 84. She was a sup-portive wife to her late hus-band of more than 60 years,

Lenard “L.G.” Henderson, who coached in Dalhart, Alice, San Antonio and Artesia, N.M. In recent years, they had been volunteer campground hosts near Creede, Colo. In addition to Butch and his wife Karen, other survivors are another son, a daughter, seven grandchildren, including JODI HENDERSON DOURIS, BA’02, and eight great-grand-children. (hendersonr@wbu.edu)

Diana Graham Jones, sister of DEB MELCHER, former assistant in the President’ Office and the University Store, and sister-in-law of MIKE MELCHER, Exec-utive Director of University Advancement, died April 19, 2016, in Olton, Texas at age 53. Also surviving are her husband, Maurice; a son, GRAHAM JONES, EX’15, her parents, three other sisters and a brother.

Edna Louise Provence Laine, 82, sister of Alumni Director Emeritus JOE PROVENCE and sister-in-law of for-mer Executive Assistant to the President FREDA PROVENCE, died April 13, 2016, in Plainview at age 82.

A graduate of the Univer-sity of Mary Hardin Baylor, she taught in Chicago, Fort Worth, Arlington, Waco, and Carlsbad, N.M. After the death of her husband, Maj. Arthur J. Laine, she traveled across country in an RV by herself for the next 22 years. Also sur-viving are a sister, three aunts and a nephew.

Dolores Sepeda, mother of RANDEE SEPEDA, BSOE’94, MBA’10, Coordi-nator of General Accounts at Wayland, died Dec. 30, 2015, in Plainview, at age 63. Also surviving are her husband of 41 years, Abel, a son, two other daughters, six brothers, three sisters and seven grand-children. (sepedar@wbu.edu)

Ruth Kincaid, mother-in-law of DR. CHARLES STARNES, Associate Dean of the School of Business, died Jan. 3, 2016, in Plainview at age 94. She was a “Rosie the Riveter” during World War II, working in Grand Prairie, Texas, building P-51 Mustangs and B-24 bombers. She also is survived by two daughters, including Susie Starnes, two sons, five grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.

(starnesc@wbu.edu)

PEGGY WALL, who served as a trustee from 2006-14, died Dec. 23, 2015, in Plainview, at age 81. She and her husband of 61 years, TC, owned and operated High Plains Concrete since 1969. They have an en-dowed scholarship at Wayland and were honored in 2014 by the Association of Former Students with the Distin-guished Benefactor Award and also received the Keeper of the Flame honor for gifts exceeding $100,000. Also surviving are two sons, two daughters, eight grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.

MELBA JO ROBERTS WILLIS, AA’45, who worked in the Office of Public Relations and Student Recruitment for 24 years, died April 19, 2016, in Bryan, Texas, at age 89. Surviving are her husband, DON WIL-LIS, BS’67, two daughters, JANABETH SPRADLING, EX’78 and her husband, RAY SPRADLING, BA’77, and JERILYN CRAWLEY, BA’80 and husband Chris and four grandchildren.

1940sJOE ROBERT APPLING, EX’48, died Jan. 7, 2016, in Crosbyton, Texas, at age 86. A veteran of the U.S. Army, he farmed in the Crosbyton area for many years. Surviving are his wife of 55 years, Jean, two sons, a daughter, a sister, six grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

ClassnotesIn Loving Memory

40 footprints

KENNETH W. NEILL, EX’40 died Dec. 23, 2015, in Friona, Texas, at age 93. He played on the Wayland Jack-rabbit football team in 1940 and was honorary captain for a game when WBU restarted football in 2012. A U.S. Army Air Corps veteran, he farmed in Friona for many years. Sur-viving are two daughters, two sons, 10 grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren.

BONNIE MAE CUPP REID, EX’48, died Jan. 29, 2016 in Los Angeles, Calif., at age 86. She taught in several small schools in West Texas before moving to California in the 1950 and taught in San Francisco for about 40 years. She is survived by her husband of 67 years, Wallace Reid, and two sisters, including FAYE CUPP SMITH, EX’52, of Sundown, Texas, and brother-in-law, REV. GLEN C. SMITH, EX’52. (Smiths: 922 Texas Ave., Sundown, TX 79372)

MILDRED VIRGINIA SAGER RENFROW, EX’54, died Jan. 25, 2016, in Bonham, Texas, at age 87. For 56 years she served alongside her late pastor husband, Ralph Wayne Renfrow, and also worked at Falls Creek Baptist Assembly in Davis, Okla. Surviving are two sons, a brother, a sister, three grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.

1950s GEORGE ARTHUR, BA’59, died Nov. 21, 2014, in Houston at age 82 from a rare form of cancer. A U.S.

Army veteran, he was a former missionary to Southeast Asia, and also served as Director of Missions in Stoddard County, Mo. and Montgomery County, Md. After retirement, he and his wife Gwen spent eight years traveling and doing volunteer construction of churches and working in SBC camps in Florida, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California, Virginia and Jamaica. Sur-viving are his wife, two sons, three daughters, four grand-children and five great-grand-children.

MYRTLE LEE BROWN CHAPMAN, EX’52, died Feb. 17, 2016, in El Reno, Okla., at age 83. A Flying Queen for two seasons, she taught Home Economics in El Reno for 18 years and was named State Teacher of the Year in 1977. The El Reno Chamber of Commerce named her Volunteer of the Year for 2003 for her many community activities. Surviv-ing are two sons, a sister, seven grandchildren, a step-grand-child, nine great-grandchildren and one great-great-grand-child. Memorials are suggested to the Myrtle and Charles Chapman Endowed Scholar-ship to benefit a Flying Queen at 1900 W. Seventh, CMB 1295, Plainview, TX 79072. BILL HAMILTON, BA’52, died Dec. 24, 2015 in Houston, at age 88. A U.S. Navy veteran, he was a part-time music director at many churches. He served as music and education director at Long Point Baptist Church

in Houston for 14 years and then was property director of First Baptist Church-Hous-ton and founded a chaplain ministry at the Memorial City Hospital where he served until his retirement in 1992. He was a past president of the Singing Men of Texas and was very active in mission work. His wife of 63 years, Opal, is deceased. Surviving are a son, a daughter, a brother, BOB HAMILTON, BA’52, and three grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.

VELMA JUSTINE BRY-ANT MONTGOMERY, BA’50, died March 27, 2016, in Lubbock at age 87. She taught school for more than 30 years and also was an Avon dealer. Surviving are a daughter, two stepsons, four grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.

REV. ALFRED TENNY-SON ROYER, BS’50, died Jan. 31, 2016, in Knoxville, Tenn. at age 90. He pastored for more than 43 years, including Glenwood Baptist and Grace Baptist Churches in Knoxville, First Baptist Church in Shelbyville, Tenn., and Palm Springs Baptist Church in West Palm Beach, Fla. He is survived by wife of 69 years, THEO LANE ROYER, who served as registrar and also taught classes at Wayland, two sons, two brothers, a sister and four grandchildren.

ARNOLD CARL TAPP, EX’56, died Jan. 2, 2016 in Hollywood, Fla., at age 80. He

was a U.S. Army veteran. He is survived by his wife Marianna and two daughters.

VIOLA MARIE WALES UPTON, BS’53, died Jan. 14, 2016, in Canyon Lake, Texas, at age 84. She was one of the first Amateur Athletic Union All-Americans for the Flying Queens. As a senior, she became the first female to be named Wayland’s Athlete of the Year. She taught for 36 years, the final 27 in the Ana-heim, Calif. School District. She was named Southern Cali-fornia Basketball Coach of the Year in 1980, and received the Merit Award for Distinguished Service from the Southern California Interscholastic Basketball Coaches Associa-tion in 1992. She served as a missionary and coach for the national men’s and women’s basketball teams of the Co-mores Islands in 1998 in the Indian Ocean Island Games. Surviving are two daughters, three grandchildren and one great-grandson.

G. LA MOYNE HARRIS WIGINTON, EX’53, died Nov. 9, 2015, in Norman, Okla., at age 82. A member of the International Choir at Wayland, she was a pastor’s wife and church worker for many years in California, Oklahoma, Texas and the Hawaiian Islands. She and her husband were missionaries to Korea. She also was a sub-stitute teacher in California. Surviving are her husband of 62 years, Travis, three sons, four daughters, a brother, a sister, and six grandchildren.

footprints 41

1960sSANDRA BROWN, EX’66, died March 30, 2016, in Mabank, Texas, at age 77. She worked for more than 10 years as an administrative assistant with Hale County Appraisal District. Surviving are her husband, Hylton, a son, a daughter, a brother and four grandchildren.

JERRY MACK HODGES, BS’61, died March 9, 2016, in Fallbrook, Calif. at age 78. He had been in the electrical business in Plainview and later in credit card services. Surviv-ing are his wife of 57 years, Mardula, three daughters, and four grandchildren.

JAMES L. WILLIAMS, BA’63, died Jan 24, 2016 in McKinney, Texas, at age 82. Through 55 years of ministry, he pastored in Lelia Lake, Ector and Era, Texas; Terral, Okla.; Omaha, Neb. and Great Bend, Hutchinson, and Mount Hope, Kan. He had been asso-ciate minister of FBC-Gaines-ville, Texas. He also served a number of years as Director of Associational Missions in Central Kansas. Surviving are his wife of almost 61 years, Jean; two daughters, a son, a sister, seven grandchildren and 16 great-grandchildren.

1970sAlice Curry Shivers, mother of EDDY CURRY, BS’75 , DR. DANNY CURRY, BA’77, and LARRY CURRY, EX’79, and mother-in-law of DEE ANN ADKINS CURRY, BA’75 , ALICIA HAVENS CURRY, BA’77 and AMAN-

DA STILLWELL CURRY, EX’79, died Nov. 23, 2015 in Lubbock at age 82. Her late husband Bill pastored churches in Texas and New Mexico. She worked for Home Interiors for many years. Also surviving are another son, two sisters, seven grandchildren and 17 great-grandchildren.

DOUGLAS DARRELL HALE, BA’71, died Nov. 17, 2014, in Amarillo at age 65. He worked as a baker for United Supermarkets, taught high school English and histo-ry for 10 years and drove for Panhandle Transit for nearly 20 years. Survivors include his mother, two sisters, and a brother.

PAM SPENCER, BS’74, died March 19, 2016, in Ca-nadian, Texas, at age 63. She taught Social Studies at Cana-dian High School from 1976-98 and then was Instructional Technology Director until her death. She was named Cana-dian Woman of the Year in 1988 for her many school and civic activities. She has been recognized statewide for her work in organizing a special curriculum for the American Cultures and Crafts program. Surviving are her father and four sisters.

1980sLESLIE EUGENE ‘GENE’ STRICKLAND, BS’85, died Dec. 12, 2015, in Casselberry, Fla., at age 58. A former Pioneer basketball player, he was retired from the U.S. Marine Corps as a major before working for Home-

land Security and later was a Realtor. Surviving are his wife of 33 years, Teri Dawn, four daughters, a son, his mother, two brothers and three grand-children. (1048 Crystal Bowl Circle, Casselberry, FL 32707)

2000sROBBLYN ‘ROBBIE’ GENTRY, BSOE’07 from the Lubbock campus, died Dec. 23, 2015, in Lubbock at age 54. She was a Multimedia Instructional Designer at the Texas Tech Health Science Center. She is survived by two sons, a daughter, her mother and one grandson.

DON SHANE ROBIN-SON, EX’01, died March 25, 2016, in Plainview at age 77. After a career in agricul-ture, he received his teacher certification from Wayland and taught math at Plainview High School, South Plains College and a charter school in Lubbock. He was a U.S. Army veteran. Surviving are his wife Patricia, a son, stepson, daughter, two sisters and four grandchildren.

2010sJERRY WAYNE DAVIS, EX’15, died March 20, 2016 in a one-car rollover near Fort Sumner, N.M. Davis, 26, and several other Texas Tech students were returning from a mission trip to San Diego, Ca-lif. They were part of the Tex-as Tech Navigators, a Christian student organization and had spent their spring break in San Diego working with the homeless. Surviving are his wife, Maggie; four daughters,

his father, mother, a sister and a paternal grandfather.

DAVID CARL LADD, MEd’12 from the Lubbock campus, died Dec. 29, 2015, in Lubbock, at age 52. He was a teacher at Bean Elementary School. He is survived by his mother, two daughters and eight grandchildren.

AMANDA RACHELLE WALKER, BAS’14 from the Lubbock campus, died March 6, 2016, in Lubbock, at age 39. She was employed by Westminster Presbyterian Church for 20 years. At the time of her death, she was employed by Agape Child De-velopment Center. Survivors include her father, stepmother, two brothers, a sister, and a grandmother.

DR. RICHARD FOUN-TAIN, Associate Professor of Collaborative Piano, and .and his wife, Sarah, an adjunct teacher in School of Business, welcomed son David Alan on March 11, 2016, in Lubbock. He weighed 8 pounds, 2 ounc-es. He joins Phoebe, 7, and Timothy, 4 1/2.

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LEDALE MEEKS ROLL-INS, BA’53, has retired after 50 years of service as organist of First Baptist Church in Marshville, N.C. She contin-ues to serve as a substitute organist, pianist for a group of senior singers and piano soloist for several local assisted living homes. She also sings in the Wingate United Methodist Church Choir. She has three children, seven grandchildren and one great-granddaughter. (2912 Meadow Creek Lane, Monroe, NC. 28110)

MIKE BALLEW, BA’70, is Operations Manager for the Arapahoe County Depart-ment of Human Services in Littleton, Colo. “I work in the Children, Youth, and Families division and my main duties are to monitor contracts between the county and various foster homes or facilities where youths may be placed and to process pay-ments to entities that provide services to them,” Mike writes. “Although, I previously retired from practicing law and from the real estate world, I think another retirement may not be too far away, but I’m having a great time.” His wife, Pat, is retired from the State of Colorado Human Services Department. They have lived in Aurora since 1987. (20957

E. Eastman Ave., Aurora, CO 80013; mikeballew@mike-ballew.com)

The Chicks of ‘76 began their friendship 44 years ago at Wayland Baptist College as freshmen. Since graduation in 1976, they have gathered at least once a year across the country in each other’s homes. They have been in each other’s weddings, celebrating birthdays, attending children’s graduations and weddings, parents’ funerals and recently, Gayla’s husband’s funeral in February. Most of the gatherings consisted of a long weekend filled with girlfriend time, lots of laughter, remi-niscing, photo shoots for their yearly calendar, scrapbooking and prayer. Last summer they gathered in Denver for the Women of Faith Conference. They keep their friendship close through constant contact and sharing prayer requests. Praying for one another has been their greatest friendship gift and blessing. The Chicks are looking forward to gather-ing at WBU for their 40th Re-union Sept. 16-17. DONNA CUMIFORD STEWART and her husband BOBBY JACK STEWART, Ex ‘70, live in Clovis, N.M. They have three children and two

grandchildren. (donnajack@suddenlink.net); GAYLA HARBER WIEST lives in Lakewood, Colo. She has one child and two grandchildren. (gwiiest2waylon@gmail.com); JUDY TAYLOR CROW and her husband Leonard live in Gladewater, Texas and have two children and two grand-children. (judy.crow54@gmail.com); VALERIE WRIGHT RITCHIE and her hus-band Bob live in Cleburne, Texas and have two children. (bobvalerietx@gmail.com); RHONDA BERGSTROM HOLTZ and her husband Tom live in St. Charles, Mo., they have two children and three grandchildren. (rhonda.col.4.6@earthlink.net)

VALERIE GOOD-WIN-COLBERT, BA’79, a former Flying Queen, was inducted into the California Community College Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame in March in Pleasanton, Calif. Af-ter three years as head coach at the University of Oklahoma, she coached at Southwestern College in Chula Vista for 25 years and is in their hall of fame. She served twice as president of the state coaches association and the junior college/community college national representative to the national organization board of directors of the Women’s Basketball Coaches Associa-tion. She served as the chair for the All-American selection committee for six years and the national coach of the year award for four years. (256 Red Deer Road, Franktown, Colo. 80116)

SHERRIE COLE KING, BA’87, MBA’95, is excited that her daughter, Mackenzie Browning, is graduating from Wayland on May 7 with a BS in psychology and a minor in justice administration. Mackenzie plans to work on her master’s in counseling at Wayland. Abby King, the older daughter of Sherrie and her husband, Harold, a contractor and county commissioner, will graduate in May from Lamar University in Beaumont with her master’s in nutritional science and dietetics. Says Sherrie, “We are so proud of these girls. We would love for our WBU friends to come to Plainview to visit!”

TOM TILLMAN, BM’88, is new Music and Worship Lead for the Baptist General Convention of Texas, assisting churches with their needs concerning music and wor-ship. He has been Music and Worship Pastor at FBC-Con-roe the past 22 years. Before moving to Conroe, he worked in music-related positions at FBC-Dayton, FBC-Olton, Ret-

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ta Baptist Church in Burleson, FBC-Earth, Emmanuel Baptist Church in Shawnee, Okla. and FBC-Albuquerque, N.M. He and his wife, Marcia, an attorney, have two daughters currently in college – Sarah at UT-Austin and Julia at Texas A&M. “I was in International Choir (Student Conductor my senior year), Spirit of America and Rejoice. I also had my first anthem published with Word Music (“We Worship You”) while at Wayland,” Tom writes. (tom.tillman@texas-baptists.org)

LORI SCHOCHLER COCKREL, BSOE’91, is the wife of the new pastor of Pleasant Hills Rives Baptist Church in Troy, Tenn. She and her husband Truitt bought a home in Troy and says “we love it and our new church family.” Oldest son, Justin, 22, will graduate in May from Trevecca Nazarene University in Nashville with a major in English-creative writing and youngest son, Nicholas, 20, is a sophomore at Carson-New-man University in Jefferson City, Tenn. and will be going on a mission trip to Africa this summer. (1223 Rabbit Creek Road, Troy, TN 38260)

PAULA MESSENGER SMITH, BA’90, is a director with Pampered Chef and a homemaker. Her husband, Brian, is Director of Commu-nications for the Evangelical Presbyterian Church with

headquarters in Michigan but the Smiths will be moving this summer to Orlando, Fla. where the EPC headquarters is permanently locating. They have a daughter, Laurence, a seventh grader, and a son, Cohen, a fourth grader. (41791 Singh Drive., Canton, MI 48188; paulasmith32@yahoo.com)

JEREMY STAMP, BSOE’97 and MA’00 from the San Antonio campus, and his wife, Kettisha, welcomed their first child, Delilah Aurora, last Feb. 17. Jeremy, who has an M.ED from DePaul and MBA from Webster University, is a stay-at-home dad and Kettisha has been Director of Student Services at Universal Techni-cal Institute in Lisle, Ill. for 19 years. They live in Crystal Lake, Ill. (jeremystamp@hotmail.com)

ANDY BARCLAY, MCM’07 and MAC’13 from the San Antonio campus, is new pastor

of Parkview Baptist Church in San Saba. He has been Pastor of Counseling and Care at Leon Springs Baptist Church in San Antonio. His ministry experience includes serving as a hospital chaplain, biblical counselor and Christian educa-tor.

KYLE BUEERMANN, BA’05 from the Virtual Cam-pus, became the new pastor of First Baptist Church in Alamogordo, N.M. on March 6. The Lubbock native has been senior pastor of First Baptist Church in Clayton, N.M. for about three years. He and his wife MICHELLE BUEERMANN, BS’05, have two children, Noah and Hailey. Kyle also has a Master of Divinity from Rockbridge Seminary in Springfield, Mo. and is working on a doctorate in ministry from Rockbridge.

DONALD CRISTAN, MBA’02 from the Lubbock campus, has been promoted to senior vice president at First United Bank in Lubbock where he also is information security officer. He has been with the bank since April 2013 and has 15 years of banking experience.

JASON DANIELS, BA’04, is Youth Minister at First Baptist

Church of Friona, Texas. His wife, SHANNA JAMES-ON DANIELS, BSIS’02, is a Reading Interventionist at Friona Elementary. They have three children, Reagan, 10, Jameson, 8, and Owen, 4. (danielsshanna@yahoo.com)

CHANCE McMILLAN, BS’06, and his wife KELSEY McMILLAN, EX’04, wel-comed their third son, Lane Thomas, on June 6, 2015, in Lubbock. He weighed 8 pounds, 10 ounces and measured 21 inches long. His brothers are Grayson Beau, 7, and Cameron Brooks, 3. Grandparents include Tommy and Susan McMillan of Plainview. Tommy is an assistant baseball coach for the Pioneers, for which Chance played. Chance is a farmer and Kelsey is a Licensed Massage Therapist. (Kelsey@gmail.com)

CODY MIKEL REN-SHAW, BSOE 02, moved in February to Minot, N.D., accepting a position as a Cashier/Stocker for Envision Xpress Base Supply Store at Minot Air Force Base. Cody writes: “I deeply regret loosing contact with all of my Wayland friends and would

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like to hear from them again.” (cmrenshaw@hotmail.com)

STEPHANIE SHAW, BS’05, Flying Queen second team All-American in 2005, coached Claremore, Okla. to the Oklahoma Class 5A state title game in March, losing to Woodward, 50-41. A Plainview High all-stater, she formerly was head coach at Northwest-ern Oklahoma State Universi-ty. She scored 1,002 points in three seasons with the Queens.

DR. MICHAEL J. SPRINGS, BSOE’00 from the San Antonio campus, received a Doctor of Ministry in 2004, with a 4.0 grade point average, specializing in Christian Leadership, from Freedom Bible College and Seminary in Siloam Springs, Ark. This past October he obtained his Doctor of Phi-losophy in Business Admin-istration, with a specialization in Organizational Leadership from Northcentral University in Prescott Valley, Ariz. He graduated with honors as a member of the Golden Key International Honor Society and Delta Mu Delta Hon-or Society with a 4.0 grade point average. Dr. Springs is

employed as a federal civil servant at Randolph Air Force Base Texas, where he is the Air Force Personnel Center Agency Records Manager. He is a 30-year veteran of the United States Air Force, where he obtained the highest enlisted grade of Chief Master Sergeant. He and his wife of 33 years, Mary, pastor River of Life Christian Ministry in San Antonio. They have one son, Tyrone, who lives in Minneap-olis, Minn.

DAVID CONE, BA’13, married Emily Cleary, a for-mer nursing student at Biola University in La Mirada, Calif. where he attended before coming to Wayland to play basketball. He is assistant men’s basketball coach at Biola and is working on a master’s degree in coaching and athletic administration. They live in Tustin and Emily works at Hoag Hospital in Newport Beach. David writes: “My time at Wayland (2011-2013) was very endearing to me. I was

able to grow in my faith, build life-long friendships and learn a lot on the basketball court from Coach Matt Garnett.” (david.e.cone@biola.edu)

TORI HUDDLESTON, BA’15, is new special projects assistant for the City of Plainview. She is responsible for assisting with the Main Street program as well as the Convention and Visitor’s Bu-reau and the Fair Theater. Her duties include event organiza-tion, social media and other outreach programs, and event/marketing research. (thud-dleston@plainviewtx.org)

RYAN SCOTT, BAS’11 from Lubbock campus, has been promoted to banking officer at First United Bank in Lubbock.

Scott has been with the bank since January 2013 and has eight years of banking expe-rience. He is a First United Bank compliance specialist and BSA officer.

STEVEN E. THOMAS, BAS’16 from the Virtual Cam-pus, is the First Sergeant for the 10th Air Support Opera-tions Squadron stationed out of Fort Riley Army Installa-tion in Kansas. He is a 20-year Air Force veteran and moves to Ramstein, Germany later this year. He had a 3.7 GPA in completing requirements for a Bachelor of Applied Science in Transportation. He and his wife, Melissa, have three sons, Connor, 16; Avery, 11, and Cael, 5. (steven.thomas.19@us.af.mil)

2010sHappy BirthdayDr. Samuel T. Ola Akande, BA’62, shown with his wife of 59 years, Comfort, recently was honored on his 90th birthday with a worship service and reception in Ibadan, Nigeria. A longtime pastor and author, he served as General Secretary of the Nigerian Baptist Con-vention and was a candidate for president of the country. Akande was honored as Wayland’s Outstanding Alumni in 1995 and his son, Dr. Benjamin Akande, former Chair of the School of Business at Wayland and now president of Westminster College in Fulton, Mo., received the same honor in 2008.

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The Back PageWelcome to

shopping malls and such. She also was near the beach.

“When I came to OBU, Shawnee, I thought, ‘What is this?’ When I came to Wayland, it was the same thing,” she said with a grin. “But that’s OK. I am focus-ing on my studies and my classes and everything.”

Veliz admits learning a

new language is one of the hardest things she has had to do – especially in West Texas where so many people speak her native Spanish.

“if you know someone who speaks Spanish, you speak Spanish all the time because you feel confident,” said Veliz, who admitted that she spent

much of her time when she first got to the U.S. just shaking and nodding her head because she didn’t understand anything any-one was saying to her.

Now, with a solid grasp of English, she is focusing on her studies with the hopes becoming a doctor who works with athletes. She is majoring in sport

science and plans to apply to medical school when she has completed her undergraduate degree. And in the midst of her ac-ademic pursuits, Veliz still practices her swimming and diving every day.

Afterall, for an athlete, the 2020 Olympics are just around the corner.

CHAMP from Page 35

“I am more than elated to be a part of Wayland Baptist Universi-ty. Moreover, I am appreciative of the dedication the faculty and staff extend to every student without res-ervation, keeping the student’s best interest at the forefront. Wayland Baptist has given me the necessary academic skills and foundation re-quired in an effort to ensure survival in today’s society and beyond. Many thanks for the opportunity and expe-rience!”

Eddie C. Peoples Jr Retired Air Force

Cibolo, Texas

“After high school, I decided not to attend college because I thought it would be difficult for me. My friends made it sound so hard that I decided I just wanted to take the easy way

out and work. I had my first child when I was 23. I tried entering a community college but, with work and a newborn, it was difficult so I quit school. I didn’t even finish my first semester.

“Years later, with a second child and owning two businesses, I thought about getting a degree but was steered against it. I remarried in 2009 and my husband encouraged me to go to college. He gave me part of his post 911 GI Bill. And here I was 46 years old and just starting college. My family was so encouraging, telling me to do it. They had faith in me that I was a very smart woman and they knew I could do it.

“Well, here we are at the final stages of my college adventure. It has paid off and I knew that with faith in God and my family, everything I

had always wanted has become a reality. Wayland has paved the way toward earning my BAS in business. Everyone is so great and helpful. God bless you all.”

Selma S. Bravo-Rodriguez BAS candidate/2016 San Antonio, Texas.

“I am serving as the Director of Engineering at Peoples Telephone in Quitman, Texas. I enjoy the people I work with and our wide variety of customers. The employment opportu-nities and promotions I have experi-enced would not have been possible without the education I received from WBU! “

David E. Parks BAS’16

Why Wayland?Alums offer testimonials about WBU

1900 West Seventh Street, CMB 1291Plainview, Texas 79072-6998Address Service Requested

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Helen and Mark Pair, Dr. Gary Belshaw and Dr. Richard Fountain celebrate on the occasion of Mr. Pair’s 100th Wayland piano recital. On April 26, in Harral Auditorium, Mr. Pair performed a varied romantic program with works by Schumann, Brahms, Rachmaninoff, Grieg, Debussy, Ravel, Chopin, and Liszt. Mr. Pair performed on the rebuilt Steinway Model D piano that he has loved though the 50 years he has been performing and teaching at Wayland Baptist University.

Quite a Pair

Stay in touch with Wayland!The Association of Former Students of Wayland Baptist University

n Call us at 806-291-3603

n Contact us by e-mail at andrewsd@wbu.edu or pettyj@wbu.edu for Class Notes, address changes, other information