PAGE TWO
THE PILOT
OCTOBEK, 1959
OVER THE PRESIDENT'S DESK
Why I Came To College
Recently Dean Eugene S. Wilson
of Amherst College listed nine rea
sons why students go to college, and
gave his evluation of each. They
are as follows: (The parentheses
1. My parents came to this col
lege (good, but not sufficient),
2. Every body in my crowd plan
ned to come, so I came too (not bad
within itself).
3. I’m not sure why I came (far
better than not to come).
4. A college education will guaran
tee me a more secure future, econo
mically and socially (at least make
it possible).
5. It will make me a well rounded
person (condemned, but the author
failed to note that well rounded
means also completion: full maturi-
with people (most people lose their
jobs because they don’t have this
ability).
7. To get a nice husband (wife).
8. I came to get training for the
profession I hope to enter.
9. There is so much to know I’m
excited at the possibility of digging
into many areas of knowledge.
Browning in his “Death in the
Desert” portrays three characters:
P. L. Elliott
one decided to know, not do or be;
one decided to do, not know or be;
one decided to be, not know or do.
Browning seems to be pointing out
an ideal synthesis of Being some
thing through Knowing and Doing.
If Browning is right the real value
of life, or college, is a by-product.
It is evasive, elusive, and may be
missed because it comes largely
through attitude. Are we in college
to learn a little math, chemistry,
biology, music, and literature? Or
is it to associate with greater minds
than ours in books as well as with
people in our quest for that which
“For a good book is the precious
life blood of a master spirit, em
balmed and treasured up on purpose
to a life beyond life.” And “Studies
teach not their own use, but that is
beyond them and above
better college.
In brief. Dean Hiott’s job is to
build up the school spirit and arouse
an interest in every activity on the
Gardner-Webb Campus. He wants
every student to take full advantage
of each opportunity presented to
him. Gardner-Webb is happy to
have the chance to fulfill one of
Dean John Hiott’s ambitions. He
admits that one of his main ambi
tions has always been to return to
his Alma Mater as a member of the
faculty. We hope that he will have
many successful years here as he
strives to make Gardner-Webb a
better school for the students who
a wiEdon
them wo:
All the reasons Dean Wilson lists
are good, but no one perhaps is
enough. Perhaps all together lack
something; but the answer may be
that through all these I may be
come something that will bring
peace to me and inspiration and
courage to those who know me. The
reason, therefore, Why I Came to
College becomes increasingly signi-
All Studying With No Social
Life Makes Smart Social Misfits
According to the old saying,
“When you want something done,
go to the busiest person you can
find, and he will do the task,” Mr.
John Hiott, our new Dean of Stu
dents, is the one to whom we should
perhaps turn. It may be somewhat
difficult to find him, especially if
you go to the most obvious place—
his ofice. You might, however, heed
the permanent sign placed on his
door—“I’m in the library if anyone
wants me.” On the other hand, it
is entirely possible that you might
encounter Dean Hiott several times
a day in such populated locales as
the Student Center, the O.M.G.
Lounge, the Gym, or any other plaCe
on campus that you might happen
pointment t
n ap-
e Dean Hiott, your
You will have no
difficulty in finding him at the ap
pointed place at the appointed
hour. You may find, however, that
several of your classmates will drop
in while you are there. They may
be seeking to register their car, re
ceive their movie pass, or sign up
for an out of town football game. At
any rate, it is easy for one who
spends a little time in Dean Hiott’s
office to see the great demand upon
his time and signature and the vast
scope of his work.
It is interesting to note the fact
that Dean Hiott’s work is entirely
new on the Gardner-Webb campus.
Never before has there been a Dean
of Students as such. This endeavor
will be new for both the students
and the Dean. Completely separated
from the academic phase of the
school. Dean Hiott’s emphasis lies
on the social and religious aspects
of the student’s life. Because he
will be working through the various
organizations on campus. Dean
Hiott will not always receive due
credit for his work. Through such
groups as the B.S.tJ., the Student
Government, and the Athletic De
partment,. he will instigate many of
his plans for the students at Gard
ner-Webb. One Important phase of
Dean Hiott’s work has already been
evidenced: The thirty six G.-W. stu
dents who attended the Lees-McRae
football game on October 27 were
very happy to have the opportunity
to travel to and from the game at
Banner Elk by means of a chartered
bus. With such an enthusiastic
cheering section,, it is no wonder
that the Bulldogs played a victor
ious game. Dean Hiott would also
like to arouse a new interest in In
tramural Sports. He is working
closely with the Athletic Depart
ment in an effort to set up a com
plete Intramural Program. Much of
Dean Hiott’s time will be spent in
planning week-end activities for
students who remain on campus.
He is particularly interested in
scheduling picnics, skating parties,
and hayrides in addition to such
seasonal events as the Thanksgiv
ing and Christmas banquets. For
those students who enjoy hobbies.
Dean Hiott is interested in forming
a Hobbies and Crafts Club. He read
ily admits that he is an amateur
phtographer and stamp collector.
When asked about this particular
interest. Dean Hiott said, “I’d be
happy to talk with any student who
collects anything except demerits.”
Another of his responsibilities in
volves planning our chapel pro
grams. He is eager to hear any sug
gestions that any student or faculty
member might have regarding how
he might make Gardner-Webb a
Thomas Dixon Collection In Cleveland
Shrine Room Of Dover Library
No doubt most visitors, many students, and some faculty
members of Gardner-Webb do not know about Gardner-Webb’s
famous Dixon Collection. Yet since 1945 the collection has
belonged to the college, and sin'*e 1952 it has reposed in the
Cleveland Shrine Room of the Dover Memorial Library. It
was through the efforts of Lee B. Weathers, then publisher
of the Shelby Star, that the books came to the college. Dixon,
with only about a year to live, gave many books from his per
sonal library and several of the original oil-painted illustra
tions for his novels. Since Dixon is, by far, the most famous
literary personage Cleveland County has produced, it is very
appropriate that this collection be housed in the Cleveland
Room.
Thomas Dixon’s is an Horatio Alger, rags-to-riches story.
He was born in Cleveland County in the midst of privation
and poverty just before the end of the Civil War. But he be-
GARDNER-WEBB PILOT
Vol. XIV October, 1959 No. 1
EDITORIAL STAFF
Editor Marilyn Roper
Assistant Editor Linda Sharpe
Advisors Mr. F. B. Dedmond
Mr. John Roberts
STAFF WRITERS
Ray Suttles Jack Gantt
Nancy Carter Nancy Castle
Ruby Givens Margaret England
BUSINESS STAFF
Business Manager Jimmy Summey
Circulation Manager Charlotte Anderson
Staff Member , Lynda Fortenberry
came not only one of the most suc
cessful novelists of the early twen
tieth century, earning well over a
million dollars with his pen, but he
also wrote the screen play for The
Birth of a Nation, the first tremen
dous screen success. Yet because of
unwise investments — for example
$25,000 for the patent on a non-re-
fillable bottle—he died in poverty
and was buried at the expense of
his friends, an end quite unlike that
of an Horatio Alger hero.
Dixon knew his story was an in
teresting one; and before his death
in 1946, he prepared his autobio
graphy which he dedicated to “the
large flock of black sheep known
as ministers’ sons—by one of them.”
Tom’s difficulties began early.
When he was only ten years of age,
his Grandma Dixon had him stop on
his way from school at Aaron Moo
ney’s barroom, not far from his
Cleveland County, North Carolina,
home and buy her a bottle of bour
bon. Tom’s father, a Baptist minis
ter and a chaplain to the Ku Klux
Klan, found out about the purchase
and soundly thrashed the boy. When
Grandma Dixon heard of the whip
ping, she got her things together,
and in a huff left the Dixon home.
Although she was eighty-seven at
the time, she trudged on foot the
eighteen miles of bad road from the
Dixon home to the home of a rela
tive in Kings Mountain, N. C. She
lived to be one hundred and four
and sat on the platform at the cen
tennial celebration of the Battle of
Kings Mountain.
Tom had a good deal of Grandma
in him. When things did not go
to suit him, he turned in another
direction. Because he was six feet,
three and a half inches tall and
weighed only one hundred and fifty
pounds, he failed to get a part in a
New York play. On his way home
to Shelby, N. C., from New York, he
decided to be a lawyer. Later, at
the suggestion of his father, he ran
for the North Carolina legislature
and was elected before he was twen
ty-one years old.
He later, however, gave up both
law and politics and entered the
ministry. It was while he was pas
tor of the Dudley Street Chiu-ch in
the Roxbury section of Boston, Mas-
just returned fror
the South, where he had spent six
weeks in “an exhaustive study of
Southern life from car windows.”
The speaker declared that “the
rebel flag still floats over every
Southern town and village. The only
way to save this nation from hell
today is for Northern mothers to
rear more children than Southern
mothers!”
Dixon, on the front row, sprang
to his feet and shouted with laugh-
something happened which deter
mined what he called his life’s
work. At a mass meeting in Tre-
mont Temple, Dixon listened to a
Problem,” which, as he says in
his unpublished autobiography, reached Dixon. ’The reviews i
“sent a shock down my spii
GARDNER-WEBB
MERRY-GO-ROUND
A brass ring for one free ride on the Gardner-Webb
Merry-Go-Round goes to the college administration for chang
ing the holiday schedule. In recent years there has been ob
vious and understandable dissatisfaction among both faculty
and students because of the rather unusual holiday periods
allowed members of the college family. For the benefit of
new-comers to the faculty and student body, it should be
pointed out that last school year Gardner - Webb had no
Thanksgiving holiday and that the Christmas vacation started
so early in December that the students were back in school
before New Years. In addition, the Easter holidays came be
fore Easter and classes resumed on Easter Monday. Gardner-
Webb students were in class three of the four holidays that
came during the academic year.
But all this has been changed now and, as this columnist
sees it, for the good. The new holiday schedule has logic on
its side and will permit students and faculty to be at home
on Thanksgiving, New Years Day, and Easter Monday.
The first vacation—the mid-term
first semester, immediately following
the m'd-term examination period.
The vacation will begin after class
es on Wednesday, November 11, and
classes will resume on Monday, No
vember 16. Thursday, November 26,
will be Thanksgiving and a holiday.
The Christmas vacation will be
gin after classes on Saturday, De
cember 19, and will extend until
Monday, January 4, 1960. This par
ticularly is a welcomed change in
c:mparison with the lop-sided
Christmas vacation of last year.
The spring recess for the second
semester begins after classes on
March 23. Classes resume on March
28. It is always advisable to have
the spring holidays coincide with
the Easter season, when this is pos
sible and reasonable, since Gard
ner-Webb students like to be home
when students from other colleges
are home. But this year Easter
comes so late that we feel the ad
ministration is right in setting the
spring recess earlier. We can be
home on Easter Sunday and stay
through Easter Monday, April 18.
Students and faculty are grate
ful for the change. Now, if the ad
ministration would go one step far
ther and devise a plan and a sy
stem which would eliminate Satur
day classes, the change and transi
tion would be complete. We can
dream, can’t we? But dreams have
come true. If Saturday class were
to suffer the fate of the Dodo bird,
we would feel like granting the ad
ministration an annual pass for un
limited rides on the Gardner-Webb
Merry-Go-Round.
the forum of the world.”
Dixon is primarily known today
as the author of the screen play.
The Birth of a Nation, the first
million dollar movie. The Birth of a
Nation was based on The Clansman.
In vain Dixon offered his screen
nlay to the major producers, but
finally a new company headed by
H. E. Aitken took the play, put it
in the hands of D. W. Griffith; and
after two years and many disap
pointments, the movie was finish
ed. It was a phenomenal success. In
ten years it was seen by a hundred
million people and grossed $18,000,-
In twenty-five years, Dixon wrote
twenty novels, nine plays, and five
motion pictures out of which he
made $1,250,000. He once held the
deed to a beautiful island off the
North Carolina coast in Currituck
Sound, which took him all day to
walk around. The craze of the land
fccom caught him and he bought
stock in a land company in Florida.
While roaming the hills of North
Carolina, he was persuaded to buy
a mountain and “to build on it a
summer refuge for tired authors,
musicians, actors, singers, and
teachers.” A company was formed
to carry out the venture known as
WILDACRES, on a peak under the
shadow of Mount Mitchell. But the
land boom collapsed in 1929, and
Dixon again lost every dollar he
had.
Dixon, though, was philosophical
about such matters. “In my rela
tion to material property,” he said,
“there has always been a screw
loose in my make-up. I’ve always
been able to make money but never
Continued On Page Pour
thundered
“A Southern white man who had
lived in the South twenty-three
years since the War and never saw
a Confederate flag . . Dixon
shouted back.
As he put it, “I made up my mind
that night to write a triology on the
South after the model of Henry
Sienkiewicz’s novels of Poland.
With Fire and Sword, The Deluge,
and Pan Michael.” He was deter
mined to destroy sectionalism and
reunite the nation.
In August of 1889, Dixon moved
from Boston to New York to be
come pastor of the Twenty-Third
Street Church.. He resigned the pas
torate of the Twenty-Third Street
on March 10, 1895, and the next
month opened the non-denomina-
tional People’s Church. Less than
four years later he resigned as pas
tor of the People’s Church, deter
mining to support himself by lec
turing and to devote himself to
writing the novels he long had plan
ned to write.
Dixon, already famous as a lec
turer, took twenty weeks of lectur
ing on a guarantee of $10,000. As
he traveled from place to place, he
worked on his first novel. Into his
novel. The Leopard S-"0ts, so the au
thor said, “had gone more than ten
years of reading and preparation
and this period of work had been
preceded by a quarter of a century
of living its scenes.” The book was
a sequel to Uncle Tom’s Cabin, with
the cruel Simon Legree transform
ed into a carpetbagger.
From Dixonville, Virginia, Dixon
mailed the manuscript to Walter
Hines Page of Doubleday, Page and
> late 1880’s that Company. Within forty-eight hours
I telegra:
f congratu-
The book was a best seller from
the beginning, and sales reached a
hundred thousand copies before the
semi-annual report of royalties