Biography of John Mark Carpenter:
He was born October 16, 1929, in Toccoa, Georgia.
Truett-McConnell College’s First Class, 60 Years Later
By Erin Garner
Sixty years ago, in 1949, 28 young men and women were the first to graduate from Truett-McConnell College.
The students from the class of ’49 went on to become teachers, pastors and missionaries, among many other things. Many married other Truett-McConnell alumni. Some stayed in touch with each other throughout the years, and others didn’t
Last Wednesday, July 1, 10 of the class’s 23 living members gathered for a reunion, along with spouses, friends, Truett-McConnell staff and a few members of the class of 1950.
In the first years at Truett-McConnell, while the class of ’49 was attending, the school did not own any buildings. Students learned, ate and slept wherever possible. Despite the school’s limited facilities, Truett-McConnell became a place close to the hearts of the first graduating class.
“I really considered it an honor to be part of the first class,” Peggy Roper Phillips said. “I had a blast just about every minute.”
“You were the pioneer class. You came when there was nothing,” Truett-McConnell president Emir Caner told the alumni at the luncheon. “Whatever we have and are today is largely due to you. You are very much owners of Truett-McConnell College.”
Many stories told at the reunion took place in a building on the square in Cleveland, next to Nix Hardware, with a chapel on the main floor, classrooms in the basement and girls’ dorms on the top floor.
John Mark Carpenter and his wife, Betty Hawkins Carpenter, were the first couple to meet at Truett-McConnell and marry. Their ceremony took place in the downtown chapel.
Students, and even faculty, also lived in homes with local residents. At the reunion, the class reminisced about families feeding them cabbage every day and eating onion sandwiches at Ash’s Store.
Betty Hawkins and her roommate, Peggy Roper, even found themselves living [in the home of] a man suspected as the head of a car theft ring. When the school found out, the students quickly were moved to another home. Betty and Peggy also told stories of being in the school’s first women’s trio with Kate Wellborn, the only trained vocalist in the group. They would travel to churches with Truett president Rev. Clinton Cutts and provide special music for services.
“We told him we were tired of hearing the same sermon every week. He said if we got new songs, he would get a new sermon,” Betty said. They sang new songs, and he changed his sermon. Ethelene Dyer Jones sometimes accompanied the group as a speaker, asking people to donate to the college. “I could really wring the money out of people with my pitiful story,” she laughed.
For many of the alumni, a return to Truett was a return to the place they prepared for ministry or met their spouses. When Betty Telford Highsmith shared memories of her time at Truett-McConnell, she recalled a senior class trip to Skylake. “We lit candles and put them in little wooden boats [on the lake]. Some of the boats stayed close to the shore; some of them went far out in the water. Some of them [burned] out early, and some burned very brightly. I have thought about that many times over the years.”
The memory of the trip has been, for Highsmith, a metaphor for their class through the years.
Article reprinted with permission from White County News issue on July 8, 2009.
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