Bravery at Baylor

"I will finish this job before I die. I can't disappoint the graduates."

These words were in the minds of all the students of Baylor University at Waco, Tex. last week. In a hospital three miles from the quiet campus their 67-year-old president, Dr. Samuel Palmer Brooks, was dying. Pain racked, his once massive frame gutted by an abdominal cancer, he was spending his remaining force for his University: putting his signature to 468 diplomas for this year's senior class.

Fortnight ago physicians told President Brooks that he had two weeks to live. Though he knew that exertion would shorten his time, he said he would sign the diplomas as he had done every spring for 29 years. They brought a desk to his bedside. At first he signed about 60 a day, but weakness and almost intolerable pain, which even drugs failed to still, slowed up his later efforts.** There were more than 100 diplomas unsigned when he could write no more.

Born in Georgia, Samuel Palmer Brooks grew up on a Texas farm. His father, Samuel Erskine Brooks, a poor Baptist preacher, taught school and farmed, sometimes drove 50 miles to Dallas to get a dollar's worth of kerosene so that his family could read and study at night. Young Samuel worked on the farm, hauled wood, became a section hand on the Santa Fe Railroad, taught school. He entered Baylor in 1887, worked and studied alternately until he was graduated in 1893. One year his roommate was Pat Morris Neff who became Governor of Texas in 1921. Taking his M.A. at Yale in 1902, Samuel Brooks returned immediately to become president of Baylor University. Baptist, Texas's oldest (founded 1845), it numbers among its alumni U. S. Senator Tom Connally, Commander Ossee Lee Bodenhamer of the American Legion, onetime President Walter Splawn of the University of Texas. In President Brooks's time its enrolment grew from 700 to 3,300, its resources doubled. A Wilsonian, Dr. Brooks ran for the U. S. Senate in 1916.

Last summer Dr. Brooks toured Europe. Impatiently trying to help move some baggage, he ruptured himself. He was operated upon in September. From then until January he was active in the campaign which raised $500,000 to liquidate Baylor's debts. Then he was ordered to rest. A hearty eater but never active in sports, he was wasting away. An exploratory incision last fortnight revealed the cancerous condition of his abdomen.

Calling together his faculty, he said: "My only regret in going is that I shall never be able to stand before another Baylor student body." On the campus students asked: "What's the latest?" and the reply came: "Condition unchanged." The Texas Legislature sent a message of sympathy. His oldtime roommate came, Pat Neff who, chairman of Baylor's board of trustees, was a likely choice as his successor.

As Dr. Brooks labored over the diplomas he looked up and said: "I have tried to teach them how to live. I wish now to teach them how to die." He sent a last message to be read in morning chapel: "Carry on. Men are mortal and pass away, but the ideals upon which Baylor University is built will never die."

**Because doctors and relatives refused for several days to reveal Dr. Brooks's condition, the Waco papers--the News-Tribune and Times-Herald--carried little or no news on the city's biggest story. It was unearthed by United and Associated Pressmen.

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