Originally published by Baylor Line Magazine in Fall 2021. 1. “KAYE!” Curtis watched as the fall happened in slow motion, her name erupting from his lips without even realizing it. No matter how fast he tried to move, he knew it was too late. Despite a running leap, Kaye hadn’t fully made it across a five-foot gorge. Before Curtis’s eyes, the woman he had come to love as life itself was falling back from the edge of a cliff 20 feet down — and 20 feet is a very long way to fall. What should have certainly been a death sentence, though, changed their lives (and the lives of many, many others) for the better. • • • The line ahead was so very long, so very full of people, who were all so very full of joy — in fact, beaming because of that joy. All of these very…

Read Now A Fall In Five Scenes

This is an edited excerpt from my mater’s thesis, originally published by Baylor Line Magazine in Fall 2019 How a student editor challenged segregation on the front page of the Lariat Ella Wall Prichard’s voice has a high pitch. Her gait is the stride of a woman with a purpose. She is always smiling, always dressed elegantly, always ready to help. Meeting Prichard in passing, she may not strike you as someone whose life has been spent speaking truth to power, but give her a minute and she will change your mind. She is able to make you care deeply about the issues in her heart. But when you give Prichard a pen that is when things really light up. With a pen Prichard can change an entire university. She has done it before in just 140 words. Prichard was the editor of the Baylor “Lariat” in the fall of…

Read Now Courage In Black & White

Originally published by Baylor Line Magazine in Spring 2019 What It Meant to Protest the Vietnam War at Baylor It was January 1967 – 22 years since Ho Chi Minh’s August Revolution. American boots had officially been on the ground in Vietnam for 12 years. The governmental and societal structures of the war-torn, southeast Asian country were creaking. U.S. troop escalation was underway. And on January 5, almost one year before the Tet Offensive in 1968, when 40,000 North Vietnamese troops conducted surprise attacks against American troops, the Lariat ran the results of a Baylor student government poll. “Should America continue its commitment in Vietnam?” asked one of the questions. There were 710 student responses. 386 students strongly agreed, 253 expressed general agreement, 49 students disagreed, and only 22 strongly disagreed. In early 1967, these results were generally synchronous across the country. Later in the year, the Johnson administration was…

Read Now Cherry Bombs & Peaceful Prayers

Originally published by Baylor Line Magazine in Fall 2018 From a young age, his destiny has been in front of him: adventure and capturing it in a frame. 1. Oversized couches scatter the second floor of Castellaw Communications Center. In the spring and fall semesters, students set up shop here between their classes and a buzz fills the hallways. In the summer, though, the buzz disappears. The hallways are empty, the couches lonely. In early June, I sat on one of those couches waiting for Curtis Callaway, a senior lecturer of Journalism, Public Relations, and New Media (JPRNM) at Baylor. The linoleum floor and ceramic tile walls of Castellaw make every small thing an echo, especially the stride of Curtis’ boots as I heard him coming up the stairwell. Like these echoes, you are aware when Curtis is there. He is tall, engaging, confident. Usually, he is on campus to…

Read Now Curtis Callaway Has The World By The Frame

Originally published by Baylor Line Magazine in Summer 2018 Today, you’ll find Interstate 35, the Texas Ranger Museum, the Texas Sports Hall of Fame, Baylor Law School, Baylor’s Mayborn Museum Complex, Grant Teaff Plaza, Baylor athletic complexes and stadiums, Lake Brazos Park, and the Waco Riverwalk. But for the most of the twentieth century, hundreds of mostly Hispanic workers made their homes here. Exactly zero square blocks remain. This community was known as Sandtown. In the mid-19th Century, after first evicting the resident Native Americans from Waco, settlers began to move in near a dogleg turn of the Brazos. They established their community here and this original point of modern settlement is actually where downtown sits today. The working class and industrial districts set up shop just off to the east — about a mile — on the banks of the Brazos. There they made a community that would last a century. This…

Read Now The Forgotten Community of Sandtown

Originally published by Baylor Line Magazine in Spring 2018 How Baylor Went Global Heading southwest on the Sanyo Main Line out of Hiroshima, it takes two and a half hours to reach Fukuoka, a coastal metropolis. Fukuoka is the largest city on the southern Kyushu island of Japan. In autumn, the mountainside landscape to the east and south becomes a tapestry of color by the changing foliage. Within this city of 5 million are the 400-year-old remains of Fukuoka Castle; the Fukuoka Art Museum, which houses works from Mark Rothko and Salvador Dali; and the largest Baptist college outside of the United States: Seinan Gakuin University. Over a hundred years ago, in 1906, the Foreign Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention sent Charles Kelsey Dozier on a mission to Japan. Ten years later, Dozier helped to found Seinan Gakuin. In 1949, the Japanese government recognized Seinan as an accredited,…

Read Now Seinan Gakuin