The Atlanta Constitution from Atlanta, Georgia • 129

rc.orUMrr iu, ioa quanta nuuruui Ilk A I I.AM UM I 'Oglethorpe Special exhibit, play part of festivities FROM 1H Gallery in Lowry Hall. Professor Lloyd Nick, the art gallery director, will give a free lecture on the exhibition, which will be open through March 15. Gallery hours are 1 p.m. to 8 p.m., Monday through Thursday; 1 to 4 p.m. Friday and Saturday; 2 to 8 p.m.

Sunday. Admission is free. "The Oglethorpe Story," written by Lane Anderson, Oglethorpe's drama director, and Robert Watson, an Atlanta director and playwright, will be presented for the public Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. in the university's Lupton Auditorium. Tickets are J3.

Helen C. Smith In honor of its 150th anniversary this year, Oglethorpe University will present two public performances of a specially commissioned play, "The Oglethorpe Story," and will mount an exhibit of works of art and documents related to the university's history. Included in the exhibit is a copy of the speech presidential aspirant Franklin D. Roosevelt made at the school's commencement ceremonies in 1932. Both events will have their first showing for the campus community during the daytime hours on Founder's Day Tuesday.

The exhibit will open that evening to the public at 7:30 p.m. in the Art By 1838, when classes started, 6ther protective steps had been taken. Nearby Milledgeville, capital of the state, was noted for its vice and corruption. College bylaws were therefore detailed and strict. Hours of study were between morning prayers, which began at 7, until p.m.

in winter and until 6 p.m. in summer. "During hours of relaxation," no student could go more than one mile from the campus without permission. Students were forbidden to keep horses and carriages or to attend "any places of fashionable amusement such as theaters, horse races of dancing assemblies." Every stu-! dent was required to attend morn-' ing and evening prayers, Sabbath worship and a Sabbath recitation on the Bible. Also, students were charged with responsibility for "be-! having with gravity and reverence" during all services.

Library with 300 books cobs launched a course that he called Cosmic History. According to Ward, "It glorified the overpowering magnificence of the universe in which this solar system and man are only small parts. Students found it tough and mind-bogglinn Discovery of King Tui's tomb fired the fertile mind of Jacobs. Some day, the United States might be a focus of archaeological digs by persons to whom it would be "a lost civilization." He decided to create for the future a record of American life in the 1930s. On the campus, workmen' built a Crypt of Civilization 20 feet long, 10 high, 10 wide.

It was placed in bed rock, lined with porcelain enamel plates, then sealed with stainless steel. Items stored in it ranged from a device to teach English to crypt finders to a recording of Hitler's voice. Four years in the making, the crypt was crammed with thousands of objects: 250 motion pictures, 960,000 pages of books on microfilm, a quart of beer, a set of artificial fingernails and a drip coffee maker. On May 28, 1940, the crypt was sealed. According to Jacobs' calculations, that was 6,173 years from the first date recorded in Egyptian history.

So, he directed that the Atlanta cache be opened on May 28, 8113 A.D. 6173 years in the future. Jacobs' unconventional actions alienated the educational establishment. His teaching of evolution and insist upon having them. Newspapers gave major space to the Atlanta-Savannah contest; embarrassed British officials refused to let Oglethorpe's bones leave England.

Jacobs brought New York Gov. Franklin D. Roosevelt to the univer-v sity for the May 1932 commencement address delivered in the Fox Theatre, which was rented for the occasion. One month before FDR was nominated for the presidency, he spoke to a packed audience in the Fox and accepted an honorary degree from Oglethorpe. At least as early as 1918 Jacobs made Oglethorpe coeducational.

Dramatizing support for the women's rights movement and capturing headlines in the process he arranged for the 1935 commencement exercises to be unique in the annals of U.S. higher education. That year, the university conferred an even dozen honorary degrees. All were given to women, including Josephine Roche, an assistant secretary of the U.S. Treasury; Mrs.

Sidney Lanier the daughter-in-law of the famous poet and Oglethorpe graduate; flier Amelia Earhart and educator Martha Berry Worldwide headlines WITL, one of the nation's first campus radio stations, was established in 1931. Nine years later Jacobs' Crypt of Civilization prototype of time capsules was given headlines around the world. A gifted classroom teacher, Ja- See OGLETHORPE 5H JI and bMts wd ta A bell carillon. Not simply in physical appearance, but in curriculum and philosophy, Oglethorpe was modeled after great British institutions. Operating still in that tradition, the university stresses broad classical education and provides a faculty mentor for each student.

Jacobs, first and longtime president of the reborn university, was a "man of varied talents, determination and aggressive salesmanship," according to Judson C. Ward, an historian of the period and a longtime vice president of Emory University. As a salesman, Jacobs found financial backers Atlanta had not previously seen. J.T. Lupton, a Chattanooga Coca-Cola bottling magnate, gave $100,000 for the hall that bears his name and for years pumped $10,000 per month into the operating budget.

Newspaper czar William Randolph Hearst gave more than $250,000 in cash as well as 600 acres of California land. H.P. Hermance, a retired Wool-worth executive, promised to build a football stadium. He attended the 1929 dedication of the first segment, then immediately left for Florida. From there he called Jacobs to say he would be unable to fund the remainder of the structure; its dedication had come on Black Tuesday.

The Hermance fortune was wiped out by the Wall Street crash. Yet Jacobs' football teams played those of big, long-established Northeastern universities and often won. His teams beat Georgia Tech and the University of Georgia, and tiny Oglethorpe was pitted against Ohio's huge Miami University, playing in what is now the Orange Bowl. Described by Ward as "a master showman, a man of ideas with a flair for attracting publicity," Jacobs was frequently in the headlines. Jacobs went to England, and in a chapel on the Oglethorpe estate discovered the location of the grave Where Georgia's founder lay.

He re from Milledgeville, invited Oglethorpe University to make the same move. Trustees secured the use of the Neal residence, used as headquarters by Sherman during the federal occupation of Atlanta in 1864. Oglethorpe re-opened in its new location in 1870 with four faculty members and 40 students. As restructured, the institution included a School of Law and a Department of Commerce plus a night school and a high school. Money and land promised by Atlanta failed to materialize during the hard times of the Reconstruction.

After just two years, during which 19 students were graduated, the university closed for the second time. A man with vigor It was a long hiatus. In 1909, Agnes Scott College brought to Atlanta a man to head a financial campaign seeking to raise $150,000. Once here, Dr. Thornwell Jacobs let his fertile imagination run.

He envisioned Atlanta as the growth center of the South. Because it had no liberal arts institution for white males, why not re-establish Oglethorpe University? Jacobs' dream was partly shaped by family tradition; bis grandfather had taught at Oglethorpe before the Civil War. Born in 1877, Jacobs was from a well-known South Carolina family. Educated at Princeton, he was an author, an ordained Presbyterian minister and energetic fund-raiser. Editors of Atlanta newspapers The Journal, Constitution and Georgian-American gave enthusiastic backing for his plans to revive Oglethorpe.

At a Nov. 18, 1913, strategy session attended by editors, plans were made to raise $250,000 for the school. Heavily supported by Presbyterian churches of the South, initial money came quirkly. A campus site northeast of Atlanta was selected. From the first, Jacobs had insisted that the new Oglethorpe University reflect the institution at which Oglethorpe himself had studied.

Corpus Christi College of Oxford University provided the model for university buildings. That influence is clearly visible today in the appearance of stately Lupton Hall, which features a tower with a 42- Ilast callI SWIMMING POOL Handy Man Special Gunite Shell $450000 16'x32" Free Form 400 sq. 3'-8' deep. INCLUDING excavation, steel re-inforcing, plumbing, 100 gunite, walk-in steps, bottom drain, surface skimmer and returns Other sizes available Call for more information 424-9402 Hulsey Pool Co. 1504 Church St.

Ext. Marietta, GA 30060 4 5070 off pcQothesljoise 210 Johnson Ferry Road 252-4782 Oglethorpe's Central Hall, built i at a cost of $38,800, was called by historian Walter G. Cooper "the finest educational structure in the state if not in the entire South." When the hall's library opened in 1 1838, it had 300 books. Within six i years, the collection had expanded to more than 2,000 volumes a healthy total in that era when U.S. college libraries were small.

Prince Jton University's collection, for ex-1 ample, numbered only 10,400 volumes in 1860. Faculty member James Wood-i row, uncle of Woodrow Wilson, be- came the first Georgia teacher to earn the Ph.D. degree. He won it at famous Heidelburg University in Germany. Liberty County native Jo-: seph LeConte became science pro-, fessor at Oglethorpe in 1851.

Later internationally renowned for his work in evolution and in geology, be and his brother John are commemo-: rated by California's Mt. LeConte. With the university's close reli-' gious connections, about one-third of Oglethorpe's early graduates entered the ministry. Yet major politi-' cal and social issues not simply religious ones were fervently debated on campus. When lawmakers in Washington, D.C., began discussion to establish the Territory of Nebraska, a central i issue was whether slavery would be permitted there.

At his 1854 Isaac W. Avery deliv-- ered a fiery declamation on the Nebraska bill. Avery later served in the Confederate Army, became edi-' tor of The Atlanta Constitution and compiled a 754-page, history of Georgia. A famous graduate Almost but not quite a contemporary of Avery was a Macon na- tive who at age 18 won a bachelor of liberal arts degree from Oglethorpe in 1860. He too wore a Confederate uniform for four years.

Im-prisoned in a federal prison in Maryland, Sidney Lanier, later poet laureate of Georgia, contracted tuberculosis and died of that malady at age 39. Years earlier, ownership of Oglethorpe had been transferred 1 from the presbytery to the Synod of South Carolina and Georgia to secure a large and stable financial JACOBS: Tried to obtain Gen. Oglethorpe's bones. base. Unlike most manual labor schools and early seminaries, the university seemed destined not only to endure but also to achieve greatness.

On Oct. 2, 1860, the institution started a new term with bright prospects and a full enrollment of approximately 150 students. But faculty members, students and town folk talked of little but the upcoming presidential election. Students debated whether "signs of the times justify us in the belief that our Republic will meet the same fate as Greece and Rome." News of Lincoln's victory at the polls brought dismay. In the after math of the election, faculty members took students to the Capitol to hear Georgia legislators debate whether and when the state should secede from the union.

Confederate bonds Outbreak of war soon emptied Central Hall and adjoining buildings on the Oglethorpe campus. Students marched away to fight the Yankees. With loyalty to the South, trustees invested the school's endowment in Confederate bonds. In May 1864, just before the battle of Kennesaw Mountain, Confederate Capt. F.W.

Capers approached Samuel Talmage, then president of Oglethorpe. Capers noted that because campus buildings were vacant, they could be used profitably for hospital purposes. Talmage concurred, and the transition was made. Atlanta fell, and Sherman began his march to the sea. By the time his forces reached middle Georgia in late 1864, most of the wounded men in Oglethorpe quarters had been evacuated.

The end of the Confederacy, however, left the university penniless. All assets except the physical property had been converted into Confederate notes and bonds. Efforts to revive the institution failed. Except for a few nesting birds, Central Hall was empty. Atlanta civic leaders, having succeeded in bringing the capital FINAL FUR CLOSE-OUT Unparalleled savings on our remaining furs! quested and seemed about to get ecclesiastical permission to remove the bones to Atlanta.

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