(This is the final installment in a four part series on my days at Lon Morris. In order to fully understand this epilogue, I beg you to please read parts 1 through 3 first. You will not regret it. I promise. Really, do yourself a favor and read part 1, part 2, and part 3 now.)

Epilogue

Meanwhile, back in Dr. Thornton’s office, before we discussed our future plans, and before he gave me my last assignment, he had some business to discuss with the both of us. My friend and I both owed some money that would prevent us from participating in commencement exercises. For me, it amounted to a simple library fine, which Dr. Thornton gladly waived. My friend still owed money for tuition, which the Vice President took care of as well.

The next day we were allowed to participate in the commencement exercise. As part of his duties, the President stood at one end of the modified stage to shake hands with each graduate, after the Chairman of the Board handed out the diplomas. Kregg and I were the only two from our group participating, but the chapel was packed with our friends and family.

I feel confident in saying the chapel never was a loud as it was the moment the Academic Dean read Kregg’s name off the list. After receiving his diploma, he walked towards the President and performed a full-on Elvis bow, before rising to shake his hand.

When my name was called, I walked over to the Chairman of the Board who just looked at me and said, “you and Kregg sure do have a lot of friends.” I just smiled and kept on walking towards the President. Somewhere, I have a photo of the President and me shaking hands at graduation. I really wanted to find it to share as part of this post because words really can’t describe the defeated look on his face.

After graduation, the President issued an edict in effect banning several members of our group, including myself from campus. Of course this didn’t stop us from conspiring with our friends still enrolled.

Kregg and I moved on to the University of Texas—Tyler and got an apartment together. Several times a week we made the trip down Highway 69 to Jacksonville to socialize at Erin’s or raise hell on campus. On nights when we didn’t feel like making the drive, we invited our Lon Morris friends to our apartment.

P.O. rented a house with Cheyenne and another LMC alum in Kilgore and often hosted events for current students and alums.

I even worked for Cheyenne for a short time period.

When I got married, everyone I invited to our wedding was either family or someone I met while at Lon Morris. When my wife and I found out we were pregnant, the first people I contacted outside of my family were my LMC friends. While I haven’t stayed in touch with all of my Lon Morris friends as I should have over the years, they remain my closest friends in the world. Clearly, Lon Morris left an indelible mark on my life.

From a distance, I continued to follow the news out of Lon Morris College, long after the last Smellbread member graduated.  For a while, it appeared that a new President would lead Lon Morris out of the darkness and into a much brighter future, but the mess he inherited from his predecessor was far too great, which when combined with his ambitious planning proved dreadfully unsustainable.

Looking back, I wish we had been a bit more persistent and chosen to focus not only on the President, but also members of the Board of Trustees and Texas Annual Conference. Both parties played a major role in the demise of Lon Morris College. We warned them; they chose to ignore us, which makes them negligent at best. Even so, we came to the school’s aide when it became apparent that these two entities were incapable of helping the school themselves.

As I met with old friends this past weekend to say farewell to the institution that brought us all together, I looked in their eyes and saw the hurt and pain one feels when they lose a friend to a careless accident. I saw the sense of betrayal one feels when they discover their partner’s infidelity. I sensed the despair a family feels when they learn their employer has gambled away their retirement, the anger one feels when they learn their government lied to them. I felt the anguish of knowing that I could change none of it. Indeed, emotions ran high.

In eulogizing the school, some turned to the Prophet Isaiah for comfort, while I chose to turn the Prophet Jerry.

 Some come to laugh their past away

Some come to make it just one more day

Whichever way your pleasure tends

If you plant ice you’re gonna harvest the wind

This will be the last I write of my time “mid-the pines” for quite some time.  I forgive all those responsible for the hurt, pain, betrayal, despair, anger, and anguish they brought upon all Lon Morris alums. In doing so, I choose to hang on to what remains.

Lon Morris College no longer exists at 800 College Avenue; however, that does not mean the school is gone for good. Let us remember, Lon Morris never specialized in offering terminal degrees, but rather providing the foundation for success, through the friendships we made, the experiences we shared, and the lessons we learned, both in and out of the classroom. This foundation made us who we are today and it’s something that cannot be ripped away by any ecclesial body, regional accrediting agency, or self-indulgent chief restructuring officer.

(This is the third in a four part series chronicling my times at Lon Morris. I certainly won’t force you to read Part 1 or Part 2 , but it does provide context.)

I Saw the Best Minds of My Generation

With so many creative minds gathered in one spot, we rarely needed to turn to artificial forms of entertainment for stimulation. This was the post-Seinfeld/pre-Sopranos wasteland of TV. Our group sitting around Erin’s living room with a guitar, a keyboard, or a laptop produced works far more clever and relevant than anything the networks ran out at the time, so I’m not sure why we had the TV on when we returned to her house that night, but the timing proved serendipitous.

NBC launched their forgettable mini-series, The 60’s, which we found to be stop-down entertainment. Though raised in a very conservative household, my inner-rebel had always been drawn to the “the 60’s,” specifically the two year period in between the “Summer of Love” in ’67 through Woodstock in ’69.

As dramatized depictions of protests broke out on screen, I began to scheme. I was no stranger to challenging those of apparent absolute authority. Once, in fifth grade, I stood armed with only a stick, chanting “hell no, I won’t go,” in front of a bulldozer threatening to tear down part of a playground at my school. Sure, I got into trouble with the head mistress, but I ended up saving the playground.

With our forced removal from the basketball game still fresh in our memory, and the hushed whispers of impropriety forever swirling about the President, I floated the idea of anonymously publishing an underground newspaper to expose some of his misdeeds, one that could potentially reach those in a position to institute positive change. P.O. shared the story of the rag he had published during his days at LMC and we had all the encouragement we needed, and a name—SMELLBREAD!

P.O. pulled out Erin’s laptop and we started working. Each of us shared the stories we had heard, some of them, like the President’s role in changing one of his son’s grades, were well documented, while others, like those concerning the school’s finances were shared in confidence. Smellbread aimed to shine a light on them all.

Within a couple of hours, we churned out roughly 1,000 words and the skeleton of what would become our little “piece of dead tree.”  On Monday, we published and made plans to distribute on campus and within the surrounding community.

Inciting the Masses

We felt we had created a masterpiece, complete with prose that would make the angels weep and the Buddha cry. Like poetry, I read aloud to those assembled in Erin’s living room, before turning the floor over to P.O.

To understand what transpired next requires some working knowledge of the campus layout and security procedures.

The school consisted of eleven main buildings: four dorms, the Moody Building, the Paul Pewitt Science Building, the chapel, administration building, the cafeteria, the theatre, and the art building. The chapel sat at the far north end of campus; the baseball field formed the southern end. In between the chapel and baseball field, two dorms bookended each end of campus, each end featuring both a boys and girls dorm. The rest of the buildings were scattered in between.

A security guard patrolled each end of campus. Normally an off-duty sheriff’s deputy patrolled the south side of campus, while Lark, the friendly octogenarian who escorted us out of the basketball game, patrolled the north side. Their primary job was to ensure that, like a Baptist Sunday school class, the dorms adhered to a strict segregation of the genders.

Most nights, Lark camped out in the lobby to ensure no female made it past his post. Of course, that never stopped us. Lark was easily distracted. He especially loved telling us tales of all the various jobs at he had worked at one point of another during his long life. Though blessed with many gifts, brevity was not one of them. He prefaced his stories with the year and it seemed like most occurred during the Truman administration. One of us would usually stand up front, listening to Lark ramble on about working for the TVA, while another of us would usher in a band of females through the front door.

There were no curfews and buildings were never locked. This allowed students to hook-up with members of the opposite sex all over campus. Indeed, many children were conceived in the chapel and other education buildings across campus.

This gave me the confidence we could distribute the papers without being caught. Only one thing could stop us, the infamous early morning fire drill.

On occasion, the President would order the dorm director, the college softball coach, to go room-to-room, knocking on each door, shining his flashlight in each, ordering everyone out into the front of the building for an improvised “fire drill.” In reality, they were trying to catch girls in our rooms. It rarely worked, but when it did, it inevitably drove bare-chested co-eds streaking through the lobby, past a dorm full of guys, so we all won.

I waited until 2:30 a.m. to ensure the hallways were quiet and to avoid any potential “fire drills.” Starting down my hallway, I proceeded to circle the dorm, sliding two copies under every door. Once I finished Fair Hall, I ventured out onto campus, visiting every building and making sure every office, classroom, and dorm room received at least one copy, and leaving a stack in all common areas. I even managed to slip a copy under the President’s door, though the original plan called for a Luther-like nailing of the paper to his door.

When I got back to my room, I phoned my female counterpart to confirm she had taken care of the women’s dorms. As I hung up the phone, my roommate rolled over in his bed.

“Dude, what the hell are you doing? It’s nearly 4 a.m.?”

“Inciting the masses, man. Inciting the masses.”

The next morning, I met Kregg and Erin in the dining hall for breakfast. We had hoped to find a packed cafeteria full of students reading our paper, but it was empty. Briefly, we played out different potential scenarios, as we toyed with our food, too nervous to eat.

We each had a 9 o’clock class in the Moody Building, so we walked out together. As we approached the building, Erin squeezed both of our hands and flashed a smile. I took a deep breath as I opened the door and walked into the lobby.

It was as if we walked into a room frozen in space and time. No one moved. No one talked. No one made any noises of any kind. Instead, everyone stood reading Smellbread.

We split up and went to our respective classes. My British Lit. professor began her lecture by reading the paper to the entire class. While I certainly hope to one day have English professors discussing my works in class, I can honestly say that the first time my writing was subject to lecture, it had quite the sobering effect.

Hearing someone else read your work aloud tends to be a lot like the moment at closing time when a bar turns on its lights. For the first time, you get a good look at the person you’ve been drinking with all night. I squirmed in my chair as the Professor read each sentence, not because I regretted writing the things we did, but rather the way we wrote them.

The liberal use of both adverbs and the passive voice violated every rule of writing I valued and a couple of cheap ad hominem attacks threatened to void our more salient arguments. So much for creating a poetic masterpiece, but as I looked around the room and saw the faces of m classmates and heard the ring of approval in my Professor’s voice, I knew we had created a shared event that the students and faculty would not soon forget. A wise man once told me, “the cheap whore can’t choose who she fucks,” and while Smellbread fell a little flat of my expectations, I knew we could use it as an instrument for change.

After class, we met in our traditional spot in the quad. Erin and Kregg reported similar classroom reactions as mine. Like me, they had begun to notice some of the paper’s more glaring blemishes. I told them that in twenty years no one would remember the number of times we used “is” and “was,” but that they would remember the event—the fact that an anonymous group of students had the balls to question the authority of the President, the Board of Trustees, and the Methodist episcopacy.

We decided to get some lunch and head to Erin’s to check the Smellbread Hotmail account we created. As we walked towards her car, we passed a smiling Professor Hoheisel. To this day, we continue to debate the meaning of his smile. Was he simply being pleasant? Did he know we were responsible? Did he approve?

The next few weeks the legend of Smellbread grew. Students continued to talk about it, while professors grew increasingly cautious. We continued to plan a second edition based on information gleaned from the Hotmail account and members of the Jacksonville community. It seems that everywhere you turned people had stories to tell about the incompetency of the school’s President and Board of Trustees.

Even so, not all in our group were on board with a second publication. At least one member of the group had been approached by a professor who warned him that if he knew any of the responsible parties to distance himself from them immediately and to “deny, deny, deny,” if questioned. While he never stopped hanging out with us, he made it clear he wanted no part of any future publications. In early March, we left for Spring Break, with the intention of returning refreshed and renewed for Round 2.

The Stasi

I returned to campus on a Saturday evening and sensed something was wrong when I saw Christine, the Director of Student Activities, running towards my car.

“You’ve got to come clean, Josh. They know.”

“What the fuck are you talking about? Who are ‘they’ and what is it that ‘they’ know?”

She explained that the Office of the President had evidence linking me to the publication of Smellbread. According to her, the President planned to pursue disciplinary action and litigation against all those involved, except me, assuming I cooperated with their investigation.

“Look, you tell the President that while I empathize with the spirit of the publication, I would never allow such a poorly written work to see the light of day. If it had been me, he would not be ordering you or anyone else around because he would no longer be in power.”

Of course she knew I was calling her bluff. There were only a handful of people on the LMC campus brazen enough to pull off this type of stunt and they were all part of the same group. I suspected they would come after each one of us trying to get us to turn on one another, but until they showed us some hard evidence linking us to the publication, we should simply carry on about our business and deny all charges.

When I walked into my room, I could tell someone had been there during the break. Papers were scattered throughout my room and the panel covering the phone jack was hanging off the wall. Immediately, I packed a bag and headed for Erin’s. Over the next few weeks, I spent very little time in my own dorm room as I was certain it was under surveillance.

The next day I received a call from the school chaplain asking me to come by for a visit. I considered him a friend and mentor, so I consented. He informed that he had learned that of the President’s henchmen had intercepted an email I had sent from my personal account to a friend at another university. Since this illegally obtained document was the only evidence they had linking me to the publication, he advised me to not back down, and to refuse to talk under any circumstance.

Other members of the Lon Morris faculty and administration encouraged us to stand strong, while stopping short of endorsing our work. Everyone on campus knew who was responsible, but we were the only ones could prove it. We held all the power, but that did not stop the President from trying to exert his own power.

The Farmer and the Cowman Should Be Friends

More than fear, paranoia threatened to break us. We all felt a little uneasy every time we saw unknown folks on campus in suits. Additionally, we didn’t feel safe communicating through email or using any phone on campus. In short, some of us, including myself, felt that the President was monitoring our every move on campus.

I began receiving personal emails from the President. In them, he pleaded with me to simply provide him the name of our sources. He assured he had no interest in harassing any students involved. I ignored them all, except one to wish him a Happy Easter on Good Friday.

At the same time, the LMC theatre department was staging a production of Oklahoma! Not surprisingly, everyone in our group was cast in the musical and it was partly due to the strength we gained through nightly rehearsals that allowed us to withstand some of the President’s enhanced coercion techniques. Indeed, the publication of Smellbread and production of Oklahoma! taught us a lot about one another.

They say trust is the product of time plus consistency. Over the course of those few months, our small band of rebels was consistent in our refusal to relent to pressure. No one in our group ever relented, names were never spoken, and for a brief moment the inmates ran the asylum. Ultimately, we survived the President’s power play and to this day I trust any member of that core group with my life.

(This is the second in a series chronicling my times at Lon Morris. I certainly won’t force you to read Part 1, but it does provide context.)

Withdrawals

While I may not have been enrolled as Lon Morris student during the spring semester, I never really left the college. My world revolved around it and the withdrawal symptoms started almost immediately.

In order to get my fix, I would make the two hour drive from my house to the campus whenever I didn’t have class or have to work. I made trips to area churches where the Lon Morris Choir was performing, just so I could see my friends for fifteen to twenty minutes. I served as an unofficial recruiter for the school, taking local high school kids for campus visit days and giving them the “hard sell.”

On one campus visit weekend, the theatre department staged a production of West Side Story. Afterwards, we attended the cast party, an event that reinforced how much I missed the place and its people. Though I couldn’t define it, my heart was strangely warmed and I knew a special something existed deep within the marrow of the school. I could no longer reject its call to communion.

When I arrived home next day, I completed my application to transfer back to Lon Morris College.

Welcome Back!

My first night as a student back on campus, Michael and I sat outside our dorm talking to his roommate, Kregg, and a freshman named Brandon. The smoke from our cigarettes engulfed us, suspended in the air by the heavy humidity. Just as the heat threatened to surpass our nicotine cravings, a figure approached from the parking lot.

He was built like a NFL linebacker and dressed in starched Wranglers, boots, and a cowboy hat. A Marlboro red hung from his lips, as he pulled out a Zippo and took the first drag. While I can’t remember his exact words, I know they were spoken without the cigarette ever moving from his lips, and I believe they were something to the effect of, “what’s up bitches.” The reaction from Michael and Kregg was akin to the video footage of American girls going crazy the first time The Beatles came to the States. Then it hit me, this was Chino from their performance of West Side Story performance.

He extended his hand and told me his name was “P.O.”

“Poe, like the poet,” I asked.

“No, P.O., as in pissed off.”

He invited us to a party he was throwing at a local hotel. The liquor flowed freely all night, and by the end, we had polished off a case of Shiner and a fifth of Crown. Though there were others there that night, a special bond was forged between the four of us, especially between Kregg and me.

Later that week, Kregg came by and invited me to his friend Cheyenne’s apartment. Like Kregg, I first met Cheyenne at the end of my first semester working on the film project, but knew very little about him other than he drove a Saab we used in the making of the film.

The details of that night remain sketchy, but they led to my first collegiate “all-nighter.” We walked out of Chey’s house at 8:30 a.m. the next morning and made it back to campus in time to grab a cup of coffee and some bacon from the cafeteria before heading off to our 9 a.m. class.

Circle of Friends

One night early in the fall semester, Kregg and I decided to go to the movies. He suggested we call his friend Erin, one of the few students who lived off campus. I had never met her, but Kregg had a class with her and assured me she was “good people.” We immediately hit it off.

Depending on who you ask, we either saw John Carpenter’s Vampires or A Night at the Roxbury that night. To this day, I maintain I have never seen A Night at the Roxbury, but the film we saw that night is hardly relevant to this tale. What mattered was that our circle was now complete.We squeezed a lot of living into the next seven months, as this group would reconvene on a nightly basis. Along the way, we lost a few and gained a few, but the core remained the same and we owned the school.

I often tell people that I went to Lon Morris to go to college and to A&M to earn a degree. The word “college” implies certain things, many of which an outsider would not find. No one will ever confuse Lon Morris with Harvard or Yale, but we tapped into something magical buried deep within the institution that helped us realize “college” was more than dorms and classrooms.

Our college experience extended well beyond the Lon Morris Campus—down GHR and Six Pack Road, south down Highway 69 to Casa de Ford and the smoke filled haze of the Pitt Grill, and of course to 1912 Beaumont Street, into the warm loving embrace of Erin’s living room.

Erin’s house served as the sanctuary where we went to receive the sacraments of college, even those not sanctioned by the school. Some nights we gathered to study John Stuart Mill or to read Keats; other nights we sat around the living room, writing songs about classmates, then calling random students on campus to sing for them. On really special nights, we called our professors and got them involved in the fun.

Our circle consisted of some of the best, brightest, and most talented students at Lon Morris. We excelled in the classroom and out; however, there were those on campus that viewed Erin’s house as a den of iniquity, and those of us who frequented it as heathens in need of reform. Even so, we managed to forge friendships with many faculty members and administrators, alliances that would prove beneficial as the year progressed.

School Ties

Indeed, these connections on campus and within the community separated our group from other campus cliques.

Kregg worked for a well-respected professor as part of the work study program. Cheyenne worked for a distinguished alum whose family had strong ties to the school. P.O. grew up in Cherokee County and had his finger on the pulse of the community. I worked for the admissions office, which allowed me to develop a rapport with several prominent members of the administration.

These connections, combined with our close friendships, enabled us to develop a unique appreciation for the school and inspired us to ensure that legacy lasted into perpetuity, no matter the cost.

Often, we heard our mentors speak of the financial hardships facing the college. According to them, the only thing that kept the school solvent were two trusts established by a couple of generous alums. There were whispers that the management of these funds had been left in the custody of an inept Board, an apathetic church, and a less than virtuous President. We knew something must change for the school to survive, but we felt powerless.

Super Fans

On a cold, dark February evening, after a day of fellowship and libations at Erin’s, we headed off to the Vivian and Bob Smith Gymnasium to catch a little basketball. We took our seats directly behind the bench of the visiting team and proceeded to root on our beloved Bearcats. Shortly before halftime, a member of our claque pointed out that the visiting team’s coach was a Pat Riley doppelganger, so in the second half, we let him have it, starting chants and cheers directed at his resemblance to the NBA legend.

Not only were we entertaining our fellow Bearcat fans, but we noticed several players on the visiting bench turn around and crack a smile at our good-natured heckling. Unfortunately, not all were pleased.

From across the gym, we saw the President motion to Lark, the elderly campus security guard, to have us removed from the game. Before we left, we turned to the stands, bowed, and walked out as we plotted our revenge.