FREE SPEECH ZONE:

Jimmie Meese Moomaw

A TRIBUTE TO ORR AND THOSE WHO TAUGHT HERE:

Dr. Harvey Cromwell, Miss Harrison and Miss Bailey

By Jimmie Meese Moomaw, MUW Class of ‘58

April 18, 2009 - I am standing on the steps of a magnificent building. For me it is one of the most special buildings – not just on this campus – but on this earth. Special to me for two important reasons.

When I walked up these steps and into this building for the first time in the fall of 1955, my life was changed forever. This is the place where I found out who I am, what I am good at, and which path I wanted to follow for the rest of my life. That was more than fifty years ago and this building – the Orr Building – was in its prime then. Behind these doors there were high ceilings that made the building feel oddly cool even on the hottest of days. There were beautiful, shiny hardwood floors…so spotless that my Mama would have said, “Honey you could eat your supper on those floors.” And upstairs the stained glass windows, especially in late afternoon, when the sun filtered through them, created a surreal space.

While the clock tower was more striking from the outside, looming as it did over everything else, the Orr building was the sentinel building – the first one you came to when you walked backwards through the old Maid’s gate.

Inside when I was here there were three unforgettable teachers – two honest to goodness old maids, Miss Bailey and Miss Harrison, and a little bitty man with thinning hair parted in the middle, wearing un-rimmed glasses – a little bitty man who became the single most influential man in my life – Dr. Harvey Cromwell.

Miss Harrison who taught Oral Interpretation was the kind of lady who moved too much even when she was standing still. Her hands were always fluttering; her head bobbing and tilting a little too much when she talked. It was as if her joints weren’t screwed together tightly enough, so she wobbled, like when there is extra play in the steering wheel of a car as it gets older. Her head and her hands were unusually big. Her voice was affected like that of many ladies who freelanced teaching expression in small towns all over the South and her articulation was too precise, which must have been hard for her because she seemed to have way too many big teeth in her mouth.

One thing you could say for sure about Miss Harrison – she loved teaching; she loved MSCW; and she loved her students. I remember when she helped me prepare for participation in an Oral Interpretation contest. For reasons I cannot now begin to fathom, I chose to read a poem by James Weldon Johnson, “Go Down Death,” a wonderful poem, still a favorite of mine, but one that was written in the voice of an old male African American preacher – a pretty big stretch for a young Mississippi white girl in 1955.

Miss Harrison’s method of teaching was not to elicit meaning with feeling from you, but to recite it first in her tremulous soprano and expect you to imitate her and repeat it inflection for inflection after her. You can imagine if Johnson’s words seemed odd coming from me, they were downright bizarre coming from Miss Harrison. But I have never forgotten those words:

Weep not, weep not, She is not dead;
She's resting in the bosom of Jesus.
Heart-broken husband--weep no more;
Grief-stricken son--weep no more;
Left-lonesome daughter --weep no more;
She only just gone home.

Now Miss Frances M. Bailey was another piece of work. She was as rock solid and fixed in her opinions as Miss Harrison was like a wind-sock. I don’t know where she was from, but if I had to guess I would say Minnesota farm stock. She was tall and angular and always walked as if leaning forward against a strong wind, taking big long strides like she was always walking in a field stepping over rows of something planted.

Miss Bailey was the theatre department. All by herself. She taught all the theatre classes. She also chose, cast, and directed all the plays and designed and helped build the sets and the lighting.

By far the most memorable event in Miss Bailey’s career and my theatre experience at the W was the night that we almost burned Whitfield down. I was on stage looking stage right when I saw a standing spotlight arc a thread of fire and ignite a spot on the old dry main curtain. No one panicked. Some girls ran to get the fire extinguisher while others of us leaped together to try with our combined weight to pull the curtain down and smother the ascending flames. We were not heavy enough. When the girls came back with the fire extinguished and tried shooting retardant on the flames, it was too late. Flames were already too high up the curtain for the foam to reach.

The auditorium was on fire and we couldn’t stop it! In a matter of seconds all the old curtains hanging over the stage – and there were 5 or 6 of them – some made of very dry gauze – were in flames. In a matter of minutes, the damage was done. Whitfield was gutted and charred.

The cast and crew gathered with Miss Bailey the next day to mourn the damage to Whitfield and the loss of time and energy we had put into our production of Mrs. McThing. Miss Bailey, herself still reeling from the ordeal, would have none of it. No guilt. No whining. “The show must go on,” she said and stuck out her chin. “The show will go on.” And somehow it did.

Much as I loved Miss Harrison and Miss Bailey, it was Dr. Harvey Cromwell who changed my life forever. Somehow, I’ll never know how, he understood me in a way that no one had before and few have since. And more amazing, he could get me to do anything he wanted me to do. If he had told me to put a peanut in the middle of the road and push it to town with my nose, I would have.

He knew what I could do before I did. He believed in me and encouraged me and gave me opportunities and praise. He taught me how to think, the importance of arrangement and organization and gave me an appreciation for eloquence – for the sheer power and beauty of the spoken word.

He was a speech teacher. I became a speech teacher. He was a debate coach. I became a debate coach.

After I graduated, I didn’t come back to campus for a long time, but I was here the day that the Cromwell Building was dedicated to honor his years of service to the W. That building stands as a present reminder of Dr. C and I know he was proud of that honor, but I am equally sure that his heart, like mine and legions of other speech majors and debaters still belongs to this beautiful old building. It was here that Miss Harrison and Miss Bailey and Dr. C took young girls like me and believed in them and helped them become strong, independent, open-minded thinkers and to bring credit to this institution and to the communities that we went on to live and work and raise our families in.

At the beginning I said that the Orr Building is important to me for two reason The second reason is because standing as it is now – damaged – un-repaired and neglected – filled with moldy detritus and un-breathable air, the Orr building is a symbol of all that is wrong with the W today. The college I attended, that thrived under other leaders with its current name has been damaged and neglected. Traditions are not dying here. They are being destroyed. The mission of the institution is not passé, it is being willfully neglected.

There is no doubt that MUW is facing multiple problems: problems with enrollment, funding, curriculum development. But I can tell you with certainty, there is no system of logic that would affirm the idea that changing the name of the institution will solve those problems any more than the notion that changing the label on a can of peas would turn it into a can of corn.

Changing the name will not solve the W’s current problems... Changing presidents would.