Category: Lambuth

When I was in school at Lambuth College, my friends and I enjoyed going to basketball games.  The games with our crosstown rival, Union University where always a highlight of the season. Even when either team wasn’t having a good season, both would bring their best games to these matchups making for an exciting contest.  My sophomore year, the first meeting of these two teams was at Union.  Lambuth was rebuilding their basketball program that year and had a difficult time with Union during the game.  One of the standouts for Union was a player named Elmer Smith.  Elmer had a good game that night and appeared to be one of Union’s leaders.  He did come off as a superstar athlete and appeared to be someone who could have their confidence shaken easily.  A plan was coming together to get inside his head during our rematch on our home court.

During my freshman year of college, someone found out about my time as the Alamo Red Devil in high school.   It was natural for them to ask me to help with mascot duties in college. I wasn’t very interested in continuing to do this, but I always aim to please, so I agreed to step into the rotation to fill Lambuth Eagle costume occasionally during basketball games.  The eagle costume was more elaborate than the one for the red devil in high school.  The eagle costume was built on a chicken wire frame for the body. The head was papier-mâché with a relatively small wire screened area to look through.  In this costume, I had less ability for my personality to shine.  In high school, I was Arthur in a devil costume whereas in college, I was just the eagle.  Yelling loud was one thing I brought to being the devil, but I was not about to shout to have the sound echo around inside that eagle head.  Other people that took the role of the eagle seemed to have a better feel for how to work inside this costume and I was happy to let them take the role as much as they wanted.  I enjoyed other hijinks in the stands with my buddies more than being on the sidelines as the eagle.

For my sophomore year at Lambuth College, I left the safety and security of Harris Hall, the freshman men’s dormitory, and moved to the first floor of Spangler Hall. The first floor of Spangler Hall was also known as the Spangler hotel Because people could come and go freely at all times of the day and night. All the dorms had policies About when men could be in the women’s dormitories and vice versa. In general, women were not allowed in men’s dorm rooms, could only enter through the main lobby doors and the doors were locked after 10 PM every night so access was limited. Spangler Hall was different from all the rest of the dorms because the main lobby door was on the second floor. There was another lobby on the first floor of Spangler, but no one monitored the comings and goings through this door. My room was the third door from the end on the ground floor if you were facing Spangler from the road. I was well behaved in comparison to most of the people on this floor, including my next-door neighbor, Jim.

When I was a freshman at Lambuth College, they would conduct an interim program each January. During that month, you would only take one class, but it met every day, usually for 3 hours. The topics were varied, usually based on the professor’s interests outside of their normal studies. I remember people taking classes where they played games every day and others where they learned about fly fishing.  I took a class on Sherlock Holmes taught by music professor Dr. Don Huneycutt. This class was typical of the ones offered during the interim program in that it didn’t take very much time in the day to attend the class and prepare. So Lambuth would become a party school every January during interim. Most of the classes met in the morning so extracurricular activities started early in the afternoon. This also gave us an opportunity to go to some of the away basketball games that were a little bit further away from campus than normal. My friend Kevin invited me on a road trip to the University of North Alabama in Florence. Our friend Michelle also went on this trip.

Dean Walter Whybrew was the executive Vice President of Lambuth College in 1980 when I arrived. He started at Lambuth in 1957 and was Dean and Registrar when my mom started there in 1959. Over the years he served as Registrar, Dean of Admissions, Academic Dean and Executive Vice President.  In addition to his other duties, he helped form the Lambuth band and led them for three years until they could hire a full-time director to the staff. He was beloved staff and students and is best remembered for a speech that he made during freshman orientation.

When I was a student at Lambuth College, I regularly ate lunch and dinner in the cafeteria.  I’m not much of a breakfast guy and was always waiting until the last minute to make it to that first class of the day. The cafeteria was a gathering place for most of the people on campus.  If you wanted to get a message to everyone on campus, making an announcement during the normal mealtimes was your best bet for getting it to the most people. Everyone who stayed on campus was required to participate in the meal plan, but we still had some people from off campus that ate their too.  Many of the faculty were regulars for lunch. Then there were some other people that we weren’t sure why they were there.  I’m going to focus on someone that I’ll just refer to as The Odd Guy.