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Fifty years ago was a bittersweet time
on the campus of Wake Forest College.
Seniors were savoring their graduation,
everyone was looking forward to the end
of another semester, but looming over
all the happiness was the knowledge they
were leaving. In the summer of 1956,
buses and moving vans transported the
students and furniture to the new
Winston-Salem campus.
Alumni will remember and
present students will learn about those
days the weekend of March 31-April 1
when they return to the old campus.
Members of the Wake Forest
College Birthplace Society and a host of
others are preparing for a weekend of
events.
Saturday morning those who
want to play can golf at Wake Forest
Golf Club, Jill Bright, a member of the
birthplace society board, said.
Then from noon to 4 p.m.
alumni and students can gather in a tent
at the birthplace on North Main Street
for refreshments, reminiscing, tours of
the birthplace and a look at the site
for the planned annex.
At almost the same time –
and as a backup if there is rain – there
will be refreshments and the
opportunities to meet friends at The
Cotton Company from 1 to 5 p.m.
Bright said most of the
activities that follow require
reservations which can be made by
calling the birthplace by this Friday,
March 24.
Those include a reception
Friday night from 5:30 to 7 p.m. at
Brigs Restaurant. Abe Elmore is
organizing dinner for the Has Beens and
the class of 1955 at The Forks Cafeteria
from 7 to 9 p.m.
Saturday morning at 10 a.m.
there will be a program about sports on
the old campus featuring a number of the
athletes who competed here. The
university is organizing this event.
From 11 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.
pictures of the different classes
represented will be taken on the steps
of the Ledford Center at 15-minute
intervals.
The early afternoon alumni
and students will have box lunches in
the former Gore Gymnasium followed by
tours of the campus.
At 3:30 p.m. in Binkley
Chapel Dr. Ed Wilson and the
university’s new president, Dr. Nathan
Hatch, will speak.
The concluding event will be
a dinner in Gore Gym/Ledford Center.
Bright said she could use
help in decorating the gym on Thursday
night for the lunch and dinner and
helping with balloons and other details
for both days. If you can help, call her
at 556-5813.
Alumni and students will be
encouraged to tour Wake Forest Cemetery
on North White Street where they will
find the refurbished graves of college
presidents. Randy and Jill Bright’s
business, Bright Memorials, had a crew
working for three days, cleaning and
resetting the gravestones and granite
coping around the plots, hauling in
topsoil for the plots and seeding grass.
Susan Brinkley, a member of
the society board, said the university
gave them $1,000 for the cemetery work,
and they hired Hugh Nourse, who has done
plantings and other landscape work.
On the weekend, the graves
of the presidents will be decorated with
black and gold ribbons.
A point of interest will be
the oldest grave, that of Charles
Merriman who died in 1837. Merriman was
the brother of Sarah M. Wait, first
President Samuel Wait’s wife, and was
the overseer for the farm in the
original manual labor institute. His
grave is to the left of the Wait plot
and not within a marked plot. |
