Interview by Megan Stroud, Editor-in-Chief of the Petit Jean Yearbook
Harding’s fifth president, Dr. Bruce McLarty, welcomed four members of the Petit Jean yearbook staff into his home on Oct. 23, 2018. McLarty shared the narrative of his life beginning with his birth and ending with the moment he learned that he had been selected as the fifth and oldest president of Harding University. A condensed version was published in the 2019 Petit Jean yearbook. This is his story in his words:
Blessed by Family (00:01)
I am the oldest of four children in my family, born to Mom and Dad when they were students at Tennessee Tech University. My parents met each other because my mom's sister married my dad's brother, so I've got double first cousins, which is legal in all 50 states. But they met on a bus! On a bus ride that was from Nashville to Baxter, Tennessee, and then he was reporting for military, reporting for duty on the East Coast. So he calls for her, and they get married like two weeks later, you know, from first laying eyes on each other to two weeks later.
So my mom and dad met when my dad and his parents came up to meet the new in-laws. So Dad is from near Oxford, Mississippi, and Mom is from near Cookeville, Tennessee — Gainesboro, Tennessee. So they met there, and then a lot of their courtship was when Dad was in the Air Force, and it was by letters. So he was in the Air Force for four years. He proposed over the mail, and she accepted through the mail. He got released on the East Coast for a leave, bought a truck, drove to Gainesboro, Tennessee, picked her up and they went to Boonville, Mississippi, where they were going to meet his parents. A preacher was waiting, and they got married and all, and then they drove to Sacramento. And so they came back from Sacramento started at Tennessee Tech, Dad became an engineer. I was born while they were in school there.
“A big piece of the story of who I am and my life and everything is I was blessed with four incredible grandparents.”
Mom was an education major, and she could never get a clear TB skin test. And so they put her in the TB hospital in Nashville, and I was born in the TB hospital in Nashville, Tennessee. So that's kind of a trivia thing, you know, it's for those trivia games and all. But because of that, my mom's parents took care of me the first four months of my life, and I always had just a bonded relationship with them, and a big piece of the story of who I am and my life and everything is I was blessed with four incredible grandparents. They all four hold a very dear place in my heart. They were just as different as they can be. The ones that took care of me when I was born — he'd been a tobacco farmer in Tennessee — they moved to Nashville and he'd always cut hair on the front porch. And so he came to town and became a barber and my grandmother worked for Royal Bloom Insurance, and in the summertime, I'd spend a week or two with both sets of grandparents.
And so grandparents were very, very dear to me. And when Ann and I met here at Harding, one of the points of connection that we had immediately was she had very dear connections with her grandparents. As a matter of fact, I overslept and missed — the College Church used to have like a 5 o'clock and a 7 o'clock service on Wednesday night, so that's where most of the students walked over to in the '70s — I had overslept so I ended up going to 7 o'clock church, and Ann was a nursing student, so she had been to clinical and she got in late, and she went to 7 o'clock church, and I really didn't know her at all other than name, but on Wednesday night, I look over and she is sitting in the middle of this sea of white-headed ladies that are sitting down toward the front on the speaker’s right at the College Church. And I just, you know, I just had a weakness for that. That just touched me that she enjoyed being around those older ladies. For her, they reminded her of her grandmother who probably is the most tender nurturer in her whole experience growing up and everything. So that's a piece of our lives.
So I was born in Nashville, but it was while my folks were in Cookeville, Tennessee, and when I was two years old, about two and a half years old, Mom and Dad had a set of triplets and they lived a portion of a day and so each of them died along through the day and all. Two years ago now, Mom turned 80, and for her birthday, we kids got together and said, ‘Let's go back and let's spend two days just traveling around Nashville and around Gainesboro and Cookeville and going to places that are significant in Mom's life.’ And so we did that, and it was just an incredible experience. And we ended up at the triplets' grave, and Mom and Dad told us the stories that we'd all heard bits and pieces, but we'd never heard as much as we heard that day and all. So that was a piece of my life. And one of the things that they talked about that day is my sister, who's four years younger than I am. So my oldest, my oldest sister, and if you know Rebecca Johnson, it's her mother. So my sister, Kim. And Kim was telling us as we stood there by the grave and all about how in growing up our next door neighbor would often — who was about a year older than she was I think — would often say, ‘Kim, you realize that the triplets had lived you would have never been born.’ Which is a real spooky thought. And so Kim is telling us that we’re kind of laughing about it by the graves and you can see when it hits her kids, you know, it's like, that means we wouldn't have been born, you know. And then my younger brother and sister, who are twins, my brother Karl who preaches at Cloverdale and my sister Karen, and it kind of hits them and it hits their kids and all that, ya know. So, I was the only one untouched by all that. I was already around so it would have had no impact on me and everything, but that was a, that was a piece of my family story. Wasn't talked about a whole lot, but it was something that my little sisters Jean, Jane and Joan who died the day of their birth, was just always a part of the family story.
“It wasn't talked about a whole lot, but it was something that my little sisters Jean, Jane and Joan who died the day of their birth, was just always a part of the family story.”
Cowboys, Indians & Desegregation (06:53)
Mom and Dad graduated from Tennessee Tech when I was three years old, and Dad's first job as a civil engineer — his whole career was with the Corp of Engineers — his first job was in Oklahoma, and he was working on Lake Eufaula, and they were just finishing that up. So all of all of my Dad's buddies and stuff, you know, as a little three year old, they would tell me about, you know, you're going to Oklahoma. There's Indians out there ya know. I grew up in the era of Roy Rogers and Cowboys and Indians and all this kind of stuff. So Dad went out and got us set up. I came out with mom. I wore my six shooters on the Greyhound bus all the way out to Oklahoma — cowboy hat — I was ready for everything, you know. But we lived there for a couple of years, moved to Little Rock, and I started school in Little Rock. I didn't go to kindergarten. Mom was a school teacher, and she taught me my ABC’s and numbers and all that.
I came through in an era where not everybody went to kindergarten, and then I started first grade at Wilson Elementary and when we had Ruby Bridges a couple of years ago, it brought all that rushing back to me because in my elementary school, there were twin girls — black girls — who were the first African Americans in my school, and I had one of the sisters in my first grade class and the other one in my second grade class. I don't know their names. I don't know the name of anybody in my first and second grade class. But I have the pictures and I've made two trips to the Little Rock School Board to see if they could help me identify these 61-year-old women now because Ann and I would love to have dinner with them and just to meet them and to say, 'What was it like for you to be in the first and second grade?' In first and second grade, I'm like everybody else, I'm just trying to survive, you know, figure out playground dynamics and rules and all that, and I would just love to know what it was like for them with the overlay of the whole race thing going on and everything. My grandmother in Mississippi one night, turns on the TV and there's Bruce on the TV screen and they followed us a great deal in the news because being in Little Rock, and we were the kids that were born the year of Central High School — 1957. So what was it like for the next wave of kids and everything and especially when there are black students starting school with us in this city that had been the center of the world, you know, when Central High School and all went on.
“They followed us a great deal in the news because being in Little Rock, and we were the kids that were born the year of Central High School — 1957.”
Mom and Dad announced to us that we were going to have an addition to the family, and we found out it's going to be two. So we had a twin brother and sister that were born when I was seven years old. Dad built a house for us in another part of Little Rock because we were in a two-bedroom house. So this was this going to make space for the family. And so we moved out near Baseline Road.
When I was in second grade back at that first school, I remember on the playground, people telling me, 'You need to pray every night this summer that you don't get Mrs. Fisher.' And 'she is, she is just the devil herself.' You know, just awful. And when it came to the second grade, I got Mrs. Fisher and maybe the best teacher I ever had in my life and just really bonded and connected with her. And then we moved to the other side of Little Rock and went to the third and fourth grade.
We moved to Memphis then, and with the Corps of Engineers, you tend to move a lot. Something I need to mention back in the Little Rock days is that Mom had grown up in a setting where she didn't know there was anything in the world but Church of Christ. I mean in rural Jackson County, Tennessee, that's all she knew. Dad hadn't grown up in a home where — his dad was a deeply spiritual man but not a church member, and his mother was deep into the Primitive Baptist Church, very much a predestinationist's orientation on the faith — so Dad grew up where faith was basically you go to everybody's Gospel meeting in the summertime to meet girls. And that was about as involved as he had been. When I was five years old, my dad was baptized at the old Pulaski Heights Church of Christ in Little Rock, Arkansas. I slept through the whole thing on the pew, but from most of — from really all of my memory of my life — my folks have been very, very involved with church, always, you know, working, helping, always at every meeting of church. And so that was never a question, but all that has all that changed when I was five years old and became what it was in all of my growing up.
A Year Long Field-Trip (12:22)
So when I was in the fourth grade, Dad had a job in Memphis. We stayed to sell the house. So we had one semester where he was in Memphis and we were in Little Rock. We get a house, and we moved to Memphis at the end of my fourth grade. And, within six weeks, we got word that Dad had received this honor where he was going to get a year of special training in Washington D.C. So my fifth grade year was in Washington D.C., and it was the perfect age to get something like that because I was 10 years old. It was like a year long field trip to Washington D.C. Every Saturday the folks would roll us out of bed, and we would go to the Smithsonian or the Washington Monument or the White House or Mount Vernon or something like that. And so it was just magical along that line. I feel sorry for my sisters and my brother because they really weren't old enough to appreciate it. They just got dragged through all that. But for me, for a 10 year old, it was just perfect. It was perfect timing and all.
“So my fifth grade year was in Washington D.C., and it was the perfect age to get something like that because I was 10 years old. It was like a year long field trip to Washington D.C.”
And the year we were up there was the school year '67-'68, and it was a terrible year in America. It was the year that Martin Luther King was assassinated, the year Bobby Kennedy was assassinated. I remember being in my bed and hearing my parents watching our little black-and-white TV in the living room. I remember hearing the voice of President Johnson saying, ‘I will not seek, nor will I accept the nomination of my party for President of the United States.’ And Vietnam was going on and all of that. And after Martin Luther King was assassinated, there was a lot of violence in the city, and there was a lot of demonstration. And so the field trip came to an end, but we still went to places like Boston and New York and the battlefields and all of that for the rest of that year.
The Preacher’s Hallowed Ground (14:26)
We came back from there and lived in the house from sixth grade on that that my folks lived in until 20 years ago, long after I'd left home. When people ask me where I grew up, I say Memphis, and it was my home from really sixth grade on up. I went to public school until my junior year of high school, and my parents put us all in Harding Academy in Memphis, and I graduated from there in the fall of '75.
“Even after six years, five years of presidency at Harding, what am I? I'm really not a college president. I'm a preacher. You know, you scratch me, and that's what's beneath the surface and all.”
When people asked me about being a preacher because, even after six years, five years of presidency at Harding, what am I? I'm really not a college president. I'm a preacher. You know, you scratch me, and that's what's beneath the surface and all. I remember telling people from the fifth grade — I don't know why the fifth grade — but I remember telling people from the fifth grade on, that you know, 'what are you going to be when you grow up?' 'I'm going to be a preacher.' And never really looked back on that. And when I came to Harding College in the Fall of 1975, I was a Bible major, biblical languages minor and never really looked back on that.
“Some people collide with their expectations when they come to Harding. They expect it to be perfect and when it's not, they get disillusioned. My expectations, I think, were a lot more modest, and Harding far exceeded them. And so I had a, had a great experience while I was here.”
I loved Harding from the get-go. I remember my first weekend on campus. I moved in Armstrong 109. That's hallowed ground. And then lived my last two years at Keller 310A. Those were my two dorm rooms. I went through in three years. My first weekend on campus, there was a retreat out at Wyldewood for Bible majors, and what is now Alpha Chi Malachi used to be called the Timothy Club. And we went out there, and I remember writing a letter to my parents — because we wrote letters to our parents back in those days and put a stamp on it. But I remember writing a letter to my parents and just gushing about 'this is the most incredible thing I've ever experienced, and I'm around people who have a heart for the Lord and a vision for the world and who care.' I just thought I had died and gone to heaven. And some people collide with their expectations when they come to Harding. They expect it to be perfect and when it's not, they get disillusioned. My expectations, I think, were a lot more modest, and Harding far exceeded them. And so I had a, had a great experience while I was here.
I got in King's Men as a social club. I think my year, my freshman year, I think was the third year of the club on campus, and it was started by about a dozen guys from Alabama Christian College, which was a two year school at the time. They came here and started their own small club. They won A team football two years in a row. So these guys were beasts. They just came, and they were great athletes. My freshman year I think there were 35 of us that came into the club so the club more than doubled. And I don't think we ever won another athletic event, you know. We just killed all of that. The other day, some guys that are in King's Men asked me if I, by any chance, had my jersey, and I did. And it's in the bottom of the drawer and half of me would fit into it. But it's made out of some of the most uncomfortable polyester that's ever been made. And the colors are still great and all of that, but it was just uncomfortable, but it looked good. And then we had a cotton, a sort of a T-shirt type material that was a light blue with the gold or yellow King's Men on the pocket that my wife insists I wore every day with blue jeans. I don't think I did, but she thinks I wore it everyday with blue jeans, and that's still in the chest of drawers. It's got big holes in it and stuff. I never wear either one, but I can't throw them away.
Drop Him Now (18:47)
When my wife and I met — as I said, I went through three years with clep credit and summer school — and in the fall of my last year she and I went to see “The Hiding Place.” We had probably been flirting at the cafeteria for forever, you know. I finally asked her to a movie, and we go to “The Hiding Place.” And the movie is so long, as y'all saw in chapel last year, the movie is so long that they had to start the first one at like 6:30 in the evening to have a double feature. The second one would be at 9:00 or something like that. So I asked her to go to the next 6:30 and all and her roommate that night says, ‘Hey, you want to go somewhere or whatever?’ And she says, 'No, I got a date tonight.' She said, ‘Really? I said who with?’ And she said, ‘Well, McLarty asked me out.’ ‘Really?’ she said. ‘Well, what time do you think you'll be back?’ And she said, ‘Well, the movie is at 6:30. I'll probably be back in the dorm by 9.’ So that was my reputation, you know, just like this nerd-geek, whatever the word was or anything, you know, probably by 9 o'clock. So after the movie, we went over to where a El Almacen or whatever the restaurant is now — it used to be a Dairy Queen before that building was built. So we went over there, and we closed the place down. We just talked all night, you know, over a milkshake or something. And after that we didn't date anybody else. We dated all the next semester.
I could show you the place in front of the American Studies Building where one day — this is in January — we come back from break, and now we're dating steadily. And she tells her mother one day on the phone that ‘I'm going out with this guy named Bruce McLarty. A nice guy and all this’. And her mother says, ‘What year is he?’ She was a sophomore, and I was a senior. Wrong answer. Because most mothers are terrified their daughter is going to get married and drop out of school. At least in our era that was the time. ‘What's his major?’ ‘He's a Bible major.’ Not sure that was the right answer. And she said, 'Well, what's he doing when he graduates in May?' And she said, ‘Well, he's spending the summer in Africa.’ Ann and I were walking and I said, 'Well, what did your mom say?' And she said, 'You don't want to know.' And I said, 'I do want to know!' And so we are right in front of the American Studies Building, walking hand in hand, and she said her first words were 'drop him now.' So that was my future mother-in-law. Those were her first words about me: 'drop him now.'
"And so we are right in front of the American Studies Building, walking hand in hand, and she said her first words were 'drop him now.' So that was my future mother-in-law. Those were her first words about me: 'drop him now.'"
And so I graduated in May, and Ann was getting ready to start the nursing program. That summer I went with two guys I graduated with, Mark Hayes and Dave Hogan, and we spent the summer in West Africa. And back in those days there was not a summer internship program like there is now. And we had no idea how three guys could wind up in Africa, you know. And we even contacted Exxon to see if we could work on a ship going across the ocean or something. We eventually found a church, Crieve Hall Church in Nashville, that had a place for us to stay if we could raise the money for the tickets. And so we went and had a summer there and a mission experience in Africa.
“It's a marvel that she married me, it really is.”
I came back and started at Harding School of Theology (HST) and Ann was starting over here in the nursing program. And so for two years, every other weekend or so, one of us would be going one direction or the other, and it's a marvel that she married me, it really is. Because two years of long distance was a long, long time. And she was going through nursing and so busy, as nursing majors are with all of that. And I was just working my head off at HST and did my first two years of graduate school. Well, we get engaged along the way. And when she graduated in 1980, we got married three weeks later in Ohio. And then our first home was then in the Mississippi Delta in a little town called Marks, Mississippi, about an hour and a half south of Memphis. All Ann had to do was open her mouth — she was the nursing grad, so she became the charge nurse in a little county hospital — and all she had to do was open her mouth and people would say, 'Oh honey, what did you do to have to come down here?' And it's like there just is no good reason for a girl from Ohio to be in the Mississippi Delta. But we were there, had a great couple of years. I commuted back to Memphis and finished up my time at HST and our very best friends while we there were Dr. Lambert Mury, who teaches physics at Harding — it was his parents. And we, for years and years, we would always tell people about how we started in Marks, Mississippi, and this incredible older couple took us in. And now we don't say that any longer because they were six years younger than I am right now. They were fifty-four years old. But they fed us, and they doted on us. So they just took care of us. I preached for a little church that on a good Sunday would have about 35 people there, and so I preached there for two years. Ann worked at the hospital.
Coming Back from Kenya (25:01)
Then we moved back to Memphis to my home church with the idea that we would work with them for a couple of years, and they would send us to Africa. And so by the time our first child was born while we lived in Marks, our daughter Charity, and then our second child was born in Memphis. And then January 31, 1984, we got on a plane and went to Kenya in East Africa. We were one of five couples on a mission team. And our daughters — our youngest, Jessica was four months old and our oldest was two years and four months old when we went. So we moved to Kenya, our team of five couples. We arrived at different times, and we were with the last ones to arrive. When we had been there for one month, the first two couples came home, and it was traumatic; it was a great difficulty. One of the couples came home and got a divorce. It was just a shocking experience in our lives. And Kenya for us just never got easier. And at about the 14-month mark we went out to Western Kenya to see this 'older missionary couple,' and I think they were 36 years old, but they were like the sages in Africa because we were 26 years old. But we went out there to talk with them about 'do we need to go somewhere else in Kenya or do we need to go home?' They talked with us and prayed with us and listened to us all weekend. And then they went for a walk on Sunday afternoon, and they came back and they said, 'We think you have a ministry in the States.' And so that was the beginning of coming back from Kenya. And that was a really difficult thing. And it probably — just emotionally, spiritually, and all — probably was something I was still getting over three years later.
College Called (27:13)
When we came back, we settled in Cookeville, Tennessee. And I was the preacher for the Collegeside Church of Christ in Cookeville, which was right across the street, literally across the street from Tennessee Tech University. In the fall of the year, we would have a gospel meeting, and the frat houses were having rush at the same time, you know. So their flashing lights coming in through the stained glass, you know, it's a collision of worlds and all. But I preached there for six years and our girls started school there. They kinda grew up. We kind of grew up all there. Six years seemed like a long time and a long tenure, you know. I look back now and I think 'it was just six years,' but back then it was a big thing. We would tell people when they would ask us, 'You know, such and such church is looking for a preacher. Are you going to interview or have they talked to you?' And we would say, 'We feel very purposeful here. We feel God's opened a great door for us here. We enjoy it. Our family is very settled. Now if the College Church in Searcy, Arkansas, called…’ And then we'd kinda laugh like, 'that's never gonna happen,' you know, but Ann and I had been deeply touched by the ministry of Jim Woodruff preaching at the College Church when we were students here and all. And so we knew what it had meant to us and what that church had meant to us. And so ‘if the College Church in Searcy, Arkansas calls…’ And I came home from an elder's meeting one night in Cookeville, and it was about midnight, and Ann said, 'Well, we got a call.'
Mike Cope had resigned here, had announced his departure here, and Ray Muncy — I don't know if you know the name Zac Muncy who teaches, it's his dad, and Zac teaches in business — Ray Muncy, that's the one that the clock in front of the student center is named after. But Ray Muncy was the chairman of the search committee and so he called Ann and asked to speak to me and, and she said, 'Well, he's in an elders meeting.' And he said, 'Well, have him call me when he gets in.' She said, 'Well, sometimes he's really late.' And Ray had a wonderful Santa Claus-like chuckle. And he just kind of chuckled and said, 'Yeah, I know all those late meetings. I'm a night owl myself. Have him call me when he gets in.' So when I got in, I called him. They set up the interview, and I came and interviewed at the College Church and things happened very quickly. And by the end of July they had hired me, and my first Sunday at the College Church was the first Sunday after classes started in the fall of '91. And so we came here. I was 34 years old at the time. We started life over here in Searcy, Arkansas, and I preached at the College Church for a total of 14 years, so that's six years in Cookeville didn't look so long after 14 years of all that.
Thrown into the Deep End Across the Street (30:27)
And during that time, I was very much preaching to Harding people, so many of the professors and administrators and a lot of the students and all that. And so, very connected with Harding, I'd go to chapel three or four days a week. That was a part of my morning was to walk over and be in chapel just kind of keep in touch with what's going on.
And after 14 years, it was in January of 2005, Dr. Burks, right before students came back from the Christmas break, Dr. Burks invited me to lunch when one day. He saw me at church on Sunday, he invited me to lunch, I think, on Monday. We went out, and he told me about this new position he was opening at Harding. It was going to be Vice President for Spiritual Life. There were a number of reasons for starting this, and he wanted this person to be the Dean of the College of Bible at least for the first two or three years of this experiment. And he would like to encourage me to interview for the job. And I had not thought of doing anything but preaching for the College Church for the whole time I'd been here. And so I prayerfully considered that possibility, interviewed for the job and was offered the job.
That summer — the College Church had already planned to give me a sabbatical so they went ahead and gave me that summer off — and Ann and I went with the Harding University in Greece program. And so we both taught in that program. And then my first day in coming back was when school started in August. And I remember all that summer that I'd wake up at four in the morning, eyes wide open and think, 'What have I done?' You know, 'I loved my life and what have I done? I've ruined it.' Because this was a major change in life--in everything. And I, you know, a piece of me still misses what I did at the College Church because I loved every year more than the year before. It was really a great thing, but I felt that coming to Harding would give me a place at the table as the future of the University I love so much was being hammered out. And so I came across and was Dean of the College of Bible and Vice President, and it was really just a phenomenal opportunity for me because being Dean of Bible put me right into the middle of all of the academic gears of the university. And so I saw just how majors develop and how programs start and just academic affairs — how everything is connected with everything else.
“I felt that coming to Harding, it would give me a place at the table as the future of the University I love so much was being hammered out.”
One of the early things that I did was Christian Home — I think it's Christian Family now — was the most popular Bible class on campus, and it was a sophomore-level class so you had to have 27 hours to get into it. But if you had 60 hours, you were kicked out of it. So the only people who can take it between 27 and 60, and every year, every semester, there was a line going out the door and the Bible office of people wanting to get an override because they wanted to take that class. So I thought 'This is easy. You move it from a sophomore class to a junior class.' And that way when people hit their junior hours, everybody on campus can take it. So ‘it's going to be easy.’ It took me two years to get that done — to take a single class and move it from a 200 level to a 300 level. I will never forget the day they showed me the piece of paper that had blanks on the back of it for 13 signatures that I had to get. All of these people had to agree to this before we can move this thing forward through academic affairs. So I say all that to say it was incredible experience. It was the equivalent of being thrown into the deep end of the pool to see if you can swim. That was academics, and then on Mondays, I was always at the cabinet table where the cabinet would have lunch with Dr. Burks. I would hear all these administrators report out, and I would hear Advancement and Admissions and Athletics and Student Life and IS&T and just all of these folks. So that was an education in the administration of it all.
Embracing the Doctoral Mission (35:13)
Another piece of it was that when I interviewed for the job, Dr. Burks had asked me, 'Would you be willing to work on your doctorate?' because I had no doctorate. My master’s degree was the old Master of Theology degree at HST, which was a 90 hour master's degree. Dr. Burks never made this peace with that degree because he said '90 hours after a bachelor's degree you should be Dr. Somebody.' And so I had 90 hours after my bachelor's, but I had no doctorate. So I thought, 'Please make me. Force me to do this.' And so when the time came I asked Dr Burks, I said, 'What do you want me to get? Does it need to be a Ph.D.? A Ed.D.? A D.Min. is the professional degree in ministry and all, and he said, ‘An accredited degree that makes you a doctor.'
So I began looking at Doctor of Ministry because that's what my whole life had been prepared for up to that point. And I ended up going to the school in Ann's hometown in Ohio — Ashland, Ohio. And I kept looking at the program and I thought, 'This fits me. This is what I want. This is a brethren church school and so conservative, an evangelical view of scripture. So you don't have to fight the battle of the Bible, you know, when you go in there.' But I didn't want to tell anybody until I was pretty certain because I thought, if I tell Ann and then I don’t, she'll be disappointed. And if I tell Ann's family and I don't go, they'll kick me out of the family. So I didn't want to tell anybody until I'm certain. And so I interviewed there, was accepted into the program, and it was a great opportunity. When I got ready for dissertation, they let me use stuff that was what I needed to study for this place.
My literature review of my dissertation was about how faith based schools tend, almost inevitably, to walk away from their faith, given enough time and, ironically, often become an enemy of the faith that founded them. So with that in mind, in a Doctor of Ministry dissertation, you get to that point and then you step out of your dissertation and you create something that addresses the challenge you have seen. So if this is what happens, how do we keep this from happening at Harding University?
And so I created a curriculum called ‘Embracing the Mission,’ with six parts. It's made to teach first year university faculty at Harding who we are, where we came from, why it's so important that we be who we are, that we teach Christianly at this place and that we not lose our soul and become just another private institution of higher education. The world's got more than enough of those. So I created that and then I tested it with my two main groups, the deans of the University academically and with the President's Cabinet who worked with things administratively. So the people who were the ‘great doorkeepers’ of the University, they had to read my stuff because Dr. Long and Dr. Burks made them read my stuff and then they evaluated it and gave me the numbers for my dissertation.
When I finished all that, I was able to immediately use that. And one of my favorite things to this day is that every August I spend about eight hours with the new faculty coming in to start at Harding, and I teach them that stuff. So I get to tell them the Harding story and the Harding stories. And the last thing we do, which is just one of the nerdiest things I do — and for a guy like me to say nerdiest, that's going a ways — but one of the things I do is we get on a bus and we go visit the two cemeteries in town. And so we go and see the grave of George S. Benson and we go see the grave of L.C. Sears and J.N. Armstrong and all these people that we've been talking about, you know, these are our people and these are the people that brought us here and the people that built this place. We go to the cemeteries, and then we take them to lunch. And so one of my favorite days of the year, it's just a lot of fun.
That brings us to the interview for the presidency.
The Interview for the Presidency (40:00)
Dr. Burks announced his retirement. And so the question is coming up: 'Are you going to put your hat in the ring for this?' You know, and that was the most talked about, gossiped about, thing in Searcy, Arkansas, for probably five years, you know, it's like ‘Who's going to be next?’ and all that.
So when the board set the process in motion, the first thing was you had to apply with a letter of interest, and then you had to answer about 10 questions. And so it was like writing another dissertation. It was a lot of thought, I mean it just took a lot of time and all. And so I submitted and all this was in writing online. The first selection part of all this, the board gets together, they go through everybody's material and they cut it down to some number. I don't know what it was. They never announced it, and they never told us. And the board decided never, ever to divulge who was being considered even when they were finalists for the sake of the people involved — worst kept secret in the history of the world — but at least the board didn't tell who it was and all.
John Simmons was Chairman of the Board at that time, and John Simmons called me up one afternoon to tell me that I made it through to the second round. Do any of y'all know James Simmons over at Harding Academy? Okay. He's a hoot. And he's — HOO HOO HOO HOO, you know — he's just so much energy, and he's just all over the place and everything. Well, James Simmons had called me that afternoon, and we talked for awhile. We just kid with each other and all this. And so it's about 4 o'clock in the afternoon; my phone rings, and the display pops up and it says John Simmons. My brain saw James Simmons. So instead of the Chairman of the Board who's a very dignified, calm person and everything, I think I'm talking to James Simmons from across the street. Four o'clock in the afternoon, I grabbed my phone like this, and I go ‘JAAAAAMES SIMMONS,’ and there is a long pause, and somewhere in that long pause my eyes catch 'that says John.' Later I thought, he could have just hung up or said, 'Nevermind, Bruce,' you know, whatever. But we continue the conversation, my face is glowing red. I'm thinking 'I'm such an idiot,' but he tells me that I made it through the day to the next round of things and all. So I did.
Then there's a battery of I forget how many questions there are. I haven't gone back to look at that in quite some time, but it was like, I don't know, maybe 14 questions and a lot of them had multiple parts, and it was a lot more writing and all this time. It was just wanting to know about how I viewed all kinds of things about our code of conduct and our charter and all these sorts and leadership issues in general and all. So then you turn loose of that, and it's in their hands. And then I get the call that I'm one of the finalists, and they didn't even tell me how many others there were. Later on, everybody figured out there were five.
“Krispy Kreme, as fast as you can go. I want the biggest, fattest cream-filled donut they have. It's time for some comfort food.”
They met with us in a hotel in a Little Rock. The hotel is right next door to Emmanuel Baptist Church as far as a landmark. And they worked it where the whole board came in, all but I think a couple of members. The whole board came in and they had these two, two-and-a-half hour interviews, and we were to walk in through a certain door, we were interviewed and then we walked out another door. None of us were supposed to see each other and all that. And, like I said, worst kept secret in the history of the world. But they tried. But for the face-to-face interview, you walk into this room, and there's a round table and there are six people at the table and your interaction is to be with them. The rest of the Board of Trustees is at these rectangular tables all over the room. And so they're there as spectators, and they're watching. They don't say anything, you don't say anything to them. You're there with these folks around this table. And then there is a legal company that does depositions that is filming this because there are two members that aren't going to be able to be there. So this is high security, you know, you'll be filmed if anybody needs to see that on all this kind of stuff and everything. So everybody's there, but it's a really tense type of a thing. And the people at the table had a script, and I think it was 18 questions that they walked me through. So different ones asked different questions and all that. And when they finished, if anybody sitting at the other tables had a question, they wrote it on a card and handed it in to these folks and then they asked me and everything. And so that went, I think it was two and a half hours that went on. And when it was over, I left the room and went out. Ann picked me up in our blue minivan. And I said, 'Krispy Kreme, as fast as you can go. I want the biggest, fattest cream-filled donut they have. It's time for some comfort food.'
“He came over, and he asked if I would be willing to be Harding’s fifth president. And so it was one of those moments where, you know, your whole life just changed.”
Then it was in the hands of the board. The interviewing had been done. Their plan was to get together at homecoming that year, and the regular board meeting would be replaced with the selection committee meeting, and the whole board was the selection committee. So they met. And then at the Black and Gold Dinner at the end of the board meeting, the Black and Gold Dinner that night, John — JOHN Simmons — gets up and updates us on the process. He said, 'People ask, how are we doing?' He said, 'It's going along really well, you know, we're on schedule.' He kind of chuckled and said, 'Matter of fact, we're way ahead of schedule.' And I was sitting there thinking, 'I know what their schedule is.' And they were hoping to get together one more time and have the announcement in February. And so I thought 'They may have decided.' The next day was the dedication of Legacy Park, and it was the first buildings of Legacy. And so I was there for the dedication, and John Simmons saw me and he said, ‘Is there a time this afternoon I could come over and visit with you and Ann?’ And I thought 'They have decided. I don't know if I'm it or not, but they have decided.' And so he came over, and he asked if I would be willing to be Harding’s fifth president. And so it was one of those moments where, you know, your whole life just changed.