[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 141 (Monday, October 3, 1994)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: October 3, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                         ``REPAYMENT OF DEBT''

                                 ______


                        HON. H. MARTIN LANCASTER

                           of north carolina

                    in the house of representatives

                        Monday, October 3, 1994

  Mr. LANCASTER. Mr. Speaker, I would like to include in the 
Congressional Record, a tribute to a truly remarkable educator, 
religious leader, and builder: Dr. W. Burkette Raper, president for 40 
years of Mount Olive College, Mount Olive, NC, upon his retirement.

  ``Repayment of Debt:'' Notes on the 40th Anniversary of W. Burkette 
                Raper, President of Mount Olive College

       W. Burkette Raper began his end-of-the-year luncheon 
     address to the faculty and staff of Mount Olive College in 
     May, 1994, with telling humor. Since most members of the 
     audience would be relieved of duty for the summer, President 
     Raper compared himself to the teacher whose class comes last 
     on the last day of school. He'd make this brief, he promised.
       What followed represented a historic moment in the life of 
     the college. Raper announced that he would retire from the 
     office of president, effective with the naming of his 
     successor by the college's board of trustees. His 
     announcement explained the move, that it was wiser to prepare 
     and plan for the change than to be unprepared for change 
     later. When he finished, Raper appeared to have shaken a 
     long-weighty burden from his shoulders. He looked relieved.
       The announcement marked an end to a forty-year presidency 
     that began with the opening of Mount Olive College in Mount 
     Olive in 1954.
       Assuming the post at age 26, Raper was the youngest college 
     president in the state and the Nation. Currently he is 
     America's longest-tenured active college president.
       Raper accepted the presidency, he told faculty, because he 
     deeply believed the value of Christian education to be 
     inestimable to the individual, church and society.
       ``I also came because I wanted people with the vision of a 
     good life and desire to serve humanity to have the 
     opportunity of an education regardless of their financial 
     circumstances.''
       Raper said he considered his work in building the college 
     the repayment of ``a debt I owed to my church and to 
     humanity.'' The debt was for his eight years of care at the 
     Free Will Baptist Children's Home in Middlesex and for the 
     opportunity of an education at Duke University and Duke 
     Divinity School.
       The oldest of four children of Mr. and Mrs. William Cecil 
     Raper, Wilson County tenant farmers, Raper was born in 1927 
     in an old school building converted to a farm dwelling near 
     Black Creek. When his father died of pneumonia in 1936, 
     Burkette, his brother James Earl and his sister Mary Lou were 
     admitted to the Free Will Baptist Children's Home in 
     Middlesex and the youngest child, Catherine, went to live 
     with their grandmother, Mrs. Maggie Davis Langston of 
     Goldsboro.
       During his senior year at Middlesex High School, Raper 
     played first base and was captain of the baseball team. He 
     dreamed of becoming a professional baseball player, but by 
     graduation he had answered a call to the Christian ministry.
       Raper earned bachelor of arts and bachelor of divinity 
     degrees at Duke, working in the cafeteria for his meals. He 
     used income from preaching on weekends to buy clothes and 
     books and to pay room rent and student fees. While at Duke, 
     he was ordained a minister and began a pastorate at Oak Grove 
     Free Will Baptist Church near Newton Grove.
       In July 1954, Raper was the young pastor of Hull Road Free 
     Will Baptist Church in the Greene County community of Arba. 
     He was a smart and polished speaker, popular among the 
     congregation and in the community. His abundant energy was 
     contagious. The church's first full-time pastor, he was a new 
     parsonage built and the church rolls swell by some 75 new 
     members.
       On a hot afternoon that month, Raper was visited by the 
     Reverend David W. Hansley. Hansley was chairman of the board 
     of trustees of the denomination's fledgling college, which 
     had recently purchase an abandoned elementary school building 
     with the view of beginning classes in September. The 
     Revenered James A. Evans, former superintendent of the Free 
     Will Baptist Children's Home where Raper had lived for eight 
     years, had recently become the college's first full-time 
     employee: Public relations director.
       Meanwhile, the college needed a president--someone to 
     spearhead the church's effort and, more importantly, lead the 
     church toward emphasis on educating its people. Hansley asked 
     Raper to take the presidency. The board has convened and 
     discussed the offer, Hansley said. In the board's estimation, 
     Raper possessed the desired personal qualities and 
     educational qualifications.
       Two weeks later, after much prayer, Raper accepted 
     Hansley's offer.
       ``The scene my wife and I saw as we walked through the 
     building is still vivid in my mind,'' Raper wrote of his 
     impressions at the time, ``fallen plaster, sagging floors, 
     debris everywhere, cracked blackboards, broken windows, 
     evidence of a leaking roof, the old table in the `soup 
     kitchen,' an empty boiler room and unkept grounds.''
       In those early years of struggle, Raper's job was an 
     amalgam of chores, some less than presidential. He served as 
     business manager, teacher, dean, registrar, assistant to the 
     janitor, publicity director, chaplain and chief fund raiser.
       In addition, he spoke to high school audiences, churches, 
     civic groups and colleges on tours through Tennessee, 
     Florida, Alabama, South Carolina, Virginia, and West 
     Virginia.
       ``If I had fully known all the problems, difficulties and 
     responsibilities involved in organizing and administrating a 
     new college,'' he said in 1964, ten years after accepting its 
     leadership, ``I doubt that I could have accepted this work. 
     But now that both the college and I have survived, I would 
     not take anything for the experience.
       ``Except that he graduated from Duke, he was about what one 
     might expect to head a `Bible school,'--a young country 
     preacher willing to take the vows of poverty and work hard 
     for what he envisioned as a high calling,'' recalled 
     Eugene Price, longtime editor of the Goldsboro New-Argus. 
     Price wrote that when it was announced that the college 
     would open, he was among ``the silently unimpressed.''
       But during a tour of the dilapidated downtown campus 
     building, Raper articulated his vision for the college to 
     Price.
       These were not wool-gathering dreams of naivete,'' Price 
     recalled. ``They were, in fact, more than dreams. Here was a 
     man who had planned his work and was working his plan--and as 
     we made our way through the drab halls and cracked-wall 
     classrooms, I knew the plan would work.''He made believers of 
     us all,'' Price said.
       ``We had to have vision, ``wrote Blanche Hargrove Jarrett, 
     Raper's first secretary. ``We had little else to go on. the 
     salary wasn't great enough to entice anyone, and the physical 
     plant certainly wasn't a showcase, so a vision is what we 
     worked with.''
       ``When you walk into an office with one file cabinet, one 
     typewriter and furniture the Dr. Raper described as one notch 
     above orange crates,' and someone tells you this is the 
     beginning of a college, you work with a vision,'' Jarrett 
     said.
       At the end of the first year, Raper wrote in The Free Will 
     Baptist magazine, ``The work has been hard, the hours long, 
     the problems numerous, but in the midst of it all, God has 
     been with us. What was a dream one year ago is now a living 
     reality in the lives of dozens of young men and women.
       ``I came (to the college) because I thought God wanted me 
     here. I am now fully convinced that here is where God would 
     have me serve Him. Every man must choose how he will spend 
     his life, and I am thankful for God's guiding hand.
       ``The thing that has done a great deal to encourage us this 
     year has been the feeling that we were fighting for the very 
     survival of the Free Will Baptist denomination. I do not 
     believe that we can long continue without Christian colleges.
       ``Now that school is out, there is still no time for 
     relaxation. We need to make further improvements in our 
     building. Financially, the college is broke, but our faculty 
     left paid.''
       Challenges threatened to derail the college's progress, 
     however. Covert opposition by some alumni of the Free Will 
     Baptist Bible College in Nashville, Tennessee, became vocal 
     and aggressive. Further, an apathy among Free Will Baptists 
     toward education and the question of the denomination's 
     supply of leadership and resources cast shadows on the 
     college's future.
       In March, 1956, Raper's schedule of teaching, fund raising 
     and administrative tasks was interrupted when he suffered a 
     heart attack. At age 28, he was incapacitated for the 
     remainder of the academic year.
       ``It changed my life and my whole mode of work,'' Raper 
     said. He learned ``instead of doing your work through sheer 
     physical force, you do it through leadership and long-range 
     planning.''
       Steps in the college's progress became a constant struggle 
     with a fundamentalist group that sought to steer Free Will 
     Baptists toward becoming a narrow sect. Financial support 
     from non-Free Will Baptist sources was questioned, as was 
     Raper's promotion of a liberal arts, rather than a Bible-
     college, curriculum.
       Animosity toward the college and Raper was openly 
     manifested from 1958-62. One pastor published tracts 
     describing ``questionable standards of Christian character'' 
     he claimed were espoused at the college. Another pastor, an 
     alumnus of the Nashville institution, wrote to Raper, ``your 
     philosophy  *  *  *  produces what is called the thinking 
     mind and I believe in Indoctrination which produced what is 
     called the indoctrinated mind. I have already told my folks 
     what I think about Christian education and I do not want any 
     confusion among my members. I have enough confusion of other 
     natures.''
       Raper answered, ``As we vindicate ourselves, our critics 
     will become fewer, but more vocal. We shall be guided by 
     truth, not sound and fury.''
       He continued his own education, earning a master's degree 
     in higher education from Florida State University. In 1960, 
     Barton (then Atlantic Christian) College conferred upon him 
     an honorary doctor of laws degree for his outstanding 
     leadership in Christian high education.
       Also in 1960, the college won accreditation by the Southern 
     Association of Colleges and Schools, in December. Six months 
     later, Gov. Terry Sanford appeared on the campus and praised 
     Raper and college's success.
       ``It is a tribute to President Raper and members of the 
     faculty,'' he said. Sanford noted that with accreditation the 
     college had won ``also the commendation of all of us 
     interested in providing better education opportunities for 
     our sons and daughters.''
       In 1962, the North Carolina Convention of Original Free 
     Will Baptists, which sponsors Mount Olive College, voted to 
     secede from the National Association of Free Will Baptists, 
     the sponsor of the Free Will Baptist Bible College in 
     Nashville. Severing ties to the national body, the state 
     convention and Burkette Raper began moving their liberal arts 
     college in a new uncharted direction.
       Construction of several facilities was initiated in the 
     1960's and `70's on a new, 110-acre site located one mile 
     from the original downtown campus. A classroom building was 
     built, followed by men's and women's residence halls, a 
     library, a chapel and a student center.
       In 1975, Raper summarized his work and the college's 
     progress in its first two decades with a quote from Oliver 
     Wendell Holmes. ``I find the great thing in this world is 
     not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are 
     moving. We must sail sometimes with the winds and 
     sometimes against it, but we must sail--not drift, nor lie 
     at anchor.''
       The state convention agreed, and in 1977 it instructed 
     Raper to begin developing a four-year collegiate program. It 
     was like beginning all over again, he said.
       The task of converting Mount Olive from a junior to a 
     senior college would require ``as much time and energy as did 
     the establishing of the college,'' he explained in 1984 when 
     the first junior class was registered. ``It is an awesome 
     responsibility.''
       Raper led an institutional self-study and development of 
     new degree programs. While faculty members pursued advanced 
     degrees, additional faculty were brought to the college. 
     Computer labs were equipped and most administrative areas of 
     the institution became computerized. College Hall, a $3.5 
     million athletic and convention center, was opened in 1984 
     and two apartment complexes were built to accommodate 
     upperclassmen.
       In 1993, Raper presided at a dinner that marked the closing 
     of the downtown campus building, the building that at one 
     time housed all of Mount Oliver College--student dormitory 
     rooms, classrooms and faculty and administration offices. The 
     closing of the building coincided with the opening of the new 
     Lois K. Murphy Regional Center, a spacious student center and 
     cafeteria on the main campus.
       In an editorial on Raper's retirement, Eugene Price of the 
     Goldsboro News-Argus wrote the ``the showcase campus'' has, 
     in many respects, ``become the cultural center of this part 
     of the state and a forum for discussion and ideas on the 
     future of our area and its people.
       ``Of even greater significance, it has graduates throughout 
     the world * * * whose lives have been enriched by what they 
     experienced at Mount Olive College. That, after all, is what 
     an institution for higher education should be about.''
       Today, Raper is respected as a modern pioneer whose 40 
     years of steadfast work and vision resulted in a burgeoning 
     liberal arts college. When visiting the campus recently, 
     Governor Jim Hunt noted that his admiration of Raper began 
     more than three decades ago when his father, James B. Hunt 
     Sr., became a college trustee.
       ``Burkette Raper has built an academic college whose 
     priorities are honest and objective education with a social 
     environment where students are taught love and caring for 
     each other and their fellow man,'' Hunt said.
       ``When I have been in this man's presence, I have said time 
     and time again he could have been the head of any college or 
     university in our state. Conversely, he could have risen to 
     the highest heights as a businessman, making several hundred 
     thousand dollars a year.''
       ``I rejoice that this man has come along at this time in 
     history and been such a great force in the area that has been 
     my home,'' Hunt said.
       Others who have been a part of Raper's work and the 
     college's growth call him an American original, applying the 
     principles of the American dream to the building of a 
     college.
       ``The full story of Mount Olive College could not be told 
     without recounting the part which hundreds of persons have 
     played as contributors, trustees, administrators, staff and 
     students,'' said Dr. Michael Pelt, chairman of the college's 
     Department of Religion from 1957 to 1994.
       ``But without leadership to inspire and to give a sense of 
     direction to all that effort, the college would not have been 
     able to serve the needs and purposes of the church which 
     founded it, nor the region where it is located,'' Pelt said. 
     ``Dr. Raper has provided that kind of leadership.''
       ``In doing so, he risked his professional standing and his 
     health, and he faced the potential of personal and 
     professional failure,'' added Jimmy Williams, longtime leader 
     in Wayne County education and Mount Olive College vice 
     president for development from 1984 to 1993. ``He has earned 
     the respect of the denomination, the people of the state of 
     North Carolina and the entire community of higher 
     education.''
       ``Mount Olive College is a miracle which never would have 
     happened had it not been for the unsurpassed focus and 
     intensity of Burkette Raper,'' Gene Price said.
       ``The foundation he built, the ongoing momentum the college 
     now enjoys--and the continuing presence of Dr. Raper as a 
     valuable resource person for the next president--bode well 
     for the future of this truly remarkable institution.''
       Raper's relationship with the college will not end with his 
     retirement from office. At the request of the college's board 
     of trustees, he has accepted the title of president emeritus. 
     When his successor has been named, Raper will continue his 
     service to the college with a focus on major gifts, special 
     projects and building of an endowment.
       Concluding his announcement to faculty and staff, Raper 
     said that instead of making an ending, his retirement opens 
     passage into a new frontier for the college. It has never 
     inaugurated a president, he noted.
       Raper smiled when he read a quote from the well-known 
     ``Desiderata'' test: ``Take kindly the counsel of the years, 
     gracefully surrendering the things of youth.''
       ``We pause only long enough to check our moorings,'' he 
     said, ``before we pick up the gauntlet and gird ourselves for 
     the next phase of our journey.''

                          ____________________