Medical Center
I New Dorm Ready
Royster Memorial Offers Six Months Construction
Feat Set By Kitchens
Unique Health Service
The S. S. Royster Memorial infirmary and community healtii center
now under way on Gardner-Webb campus will be completed by the mid
dle of October and dedicated to the medical care of students and residents
of the Gardner-Webb area.
The infirmary was provided through a fund started by the late Dr.
S. S. Royster, for years a prominent North Carolina physician of Shelby.
Dr. Royster’s interest in Gardner-Webb College grew largely out of his
close friendship with the late Ambassador O. Max Gardner. Dr. Royster
died in July, 1948.
The infirmary, a one-story, T
shaped building, is being erected
on the north crest of the campus.
It will contain 12 beds, offices for
the college physician and nurses,
x-ray equipment, diathermy facili
ties, and a small laboratory for
diagnostic service which will '
emphasized at the clinic. '
health center will furnish 24-h_ ___
medical service and facilities for
emergency cases, although it plans
to send hospital and surgical c
to larger medical centers.
(Ilj?
Ptlnl
Gardner-Webb College, Boiling Springs, North Carolina
Volume XVII, No. 1 — September, 1949
3 ill to attend
itrance medi-
i health edu-
Through the Royster Memorial,
the Gardner-Webb students will be
given complete general physical ex
aminations prior to school; diag
nosis and care of ills; beds for isolation and care when tc
classes; all first aid and minor surgery; senior college e
cal examinations; annual blood tests and vaccinations;
cation program; and dental surgery and care.
Rural residents will be offered 24-hour me.dical service, with a doctor
or graduate nurse on duty at all times. Dr. W. Wyan Washburn, college
physician, is a General Practitioner whose services will be on the General
Practice level. Through the community health center, the village doctor
is able to give adequate rural medical care by use of the fluoroscope, a
small x-ray machine, a laboratory for routine examinations, and a mini
mum of equipment for physical therapy, such as, infra red and ultra
violet lights, and hot water baths.
Health films to cover personal hygiene, preventive medicine, physical
training, and other medical-health subjects have already been booked
for the health education program which will consist of home hygiene
classes for selecte.d students and residents of the community. Films are
being obtained from the film libraries of the University of North Caro
lina, Harvard, Princeton, Columbia, and the University of Chicago.
This S. S. Royster Memorial infirmary is something new in junior col
lege medical service, making Gardner-Webb the first junior college in
North Carolina to have a health center of this type.
By Ramona Cornwell
Gardner-Webb’s new $230,000, 100-man dormitory has been completed
for the fall term. This is the first new building built for men since Gard
ner-Webb College was organized in 1905.
The new dorm was named recently in honor of the late J. W. “Decker”
Gardner, son of the late Ambassador O. Max Gardner, when trustees
accepted re-designation of a $50,000 contribution by J. P. Stevens and
Company and an additional gift of $25,000 by friends and admirers of
James Webb Gardner as initial steps toward lifting a $150,000 debt from
the newest campus structure. A campaign to raise a balance of $75,000
will be waged throughout the area
this fall.
The structure is situated on the
south of the campus back of the
old Huggins-Curtis Hall and faces
the new girls dormitory on the
north campus. The fireproof struc
ture, recently completed by the R.
H. Pinnix Construction Company of
Gastonia, will house classrooms,
faculty offices, and seminars on the
ground floor, sleeping quarters on
the first and second floors, and
squadroom overnight facilities for
visiting athletic teams on the third-
floor-attic. It is believed to be the
first junior college dormitory in
North Carolina to be equipped with
radiant heat, a heating system in the ceiling with no open radiator system.
In the first week of March, the first steps in excavation were under
way; by the first week of September, keys were hung on every door of the
radiantly heated dormitory. Behind this record is the story of a man
who once studied to be a doctor, but found his talents more adapted to
large-scale construction than to anatomy lectures and biology labs.
Little more than a decade ago, J. H. Kitchens, superintendent of con-
for the new Gardner-Webb dorm and a native of Waynesboro,
^ ^ “down on his
er in construction work in 1938 at 25 cents
It It rainea, and from Augusta he went to
lan for a year and a half. Prom rodman the
t man, party chief, engineering and archi-
finally supervisory work, and all of it in a flat
a civil e:
I. C„ a
steps V
tectural .drafting, a
decade.
Convincing testimony of the Gardner-Webb construction miracle are
the remarks made recently by three veteran construction men on the
job, two skilled carpenters and the timekeeper. According to Joseph Green
of Ellenboro, “I just knew the job couldn’t be done by September when
I first came with the outfit in May, but after working under Kitchens
for a week, I began singing a different turn, dern if we ain’t going to
Johnnie Smith, youthful combination carpenter and labor foreman
of Pembroke, was approached recently in the middle of a task by one
of the men who gestured about rushing the job! “Rush, the dickens!”
Smith exclaimed. “I’m burning my hammer heads off now I’ve never
h speed on a job since I’v(
\i MMMXI
1 this trade.”
And Earl Whisenant, the job’s
timekeeper of Morganton, stood in
the doorway of the office-warehouse
I shed and saijd, “This shack has
for 1
I building
New J. W. “Decker” Gardner Dormitory
years, shifting :
to another as they a
this is the first time materials have
come and been used before they
were half way stored. This beats
all I’ve ever seen.”
New Dean Of
Women Arrives
Miss Willie Kate Baldwin of Lau
rens, S. C., has been named new
Dean of Women of Gardner-Webb
College, succeeding Mrs. G. W. Vick,
Jr., for nine years women’s dean on
the campus.
Miss Baldwin, a graduate of Win-
throp College, received her Mas
ter’s degree in Religious Education
at the W. M. U. Training School,
Louisville, Kentucky. While in col
lege, she held the Markley Lee
Scholarship, and was the assistant
to her major professor at Louis
ville during her senior year in Mas
ter’s work. Dean Baldwin did Post
Graduate work at Columbia Uni
versity, where she was connected
(Continued on Page 4)