The Bronco, Yearbook of Hardin-Simmons University, 1935 Page: 6
[215] p. : ill., ports. ; 30 cm.View a full description of this yearbook.
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AN APPRECIATION
BY PRESIDENT J. D. SANDEFER
I PAUSE A MOMENT to pay my meed of tribute, in so far as my command of
language and my ability to express myself permits, to Mr. and Mrs. John G.
Hardin of Burkburnett whose contributions to causes founded upon the principles
of Christ and fostered by those who are grounded in these great verities have been
written into the minds and consciences of tens of thousands who love the highest
and best in the field of religious human endeavor.
Mr. and Mrs. Hardin, with their pioneer vision, planted themselves in this
great West more than a half century ago and gave their early lives and energies
toward helping in fostering and building every legitimate agency that found expression
in constructive pioneer life. In building in a vitally worthwhile way
toward the choicest in the field of intellectual and spiritual endeavor they succeeded
in a very unusual way in what the world would call financial success.
The great West is potentially fraught with undreamed of natural resources.
These good friends and benefactors had chosen well and fortunately their ranch
properties from under which within the last few years that golden liquid called
oil was found to flow and some additional millions of wealth came to these already
frugal servants. They saw in this a challenging opportunity for accentuated service
in investing their money in the lives of boys and girls, young men and young
women who need to be served; in being served their own personalities would become
so enriched as that they would go forth into the world to serve in that way whereunto
Christ has challenged everyone clothed with the responsibility and opportunity
for larger service.
I have the feeling that they have caught the vision of another friend of this
institution, residing in another state, who has become one of its largest benefactors.
He gave three reasons as follows: In the first place, he endorsed the policy
of the management of the institution in its efforts to keep it anchored to the Christian
fundamentals. In the second place, this friend gave it as his judgment that
there is no institution, in so far as he knows, located so strategically as this one to
serve this great Southwest as its natural resources unfold during the next fifty
years. In the third place, he says there is no section of our country, in his judgment,
offering so large a percentage of the Anglo-Saxon stock as West Texas. He
said further that he wanted the privilege of making an investment in a university
training Anglo-Saxon youth that will equal in scholarship that offered in any
other university and at the same time that scholarship be religiously cultural.
Mr. and Mrs. Hardin have on many occasions given substantially these reasons
for the giving of their monies to causes Christian. Hardin-Simmons University
therefore meets the challenge of these friends and pledges itself anew toward
the maintenance of these religious and academic standards so enthusiastically endorsed
by them.
The trustees, the faculty, our great student body, and nearly twenty thousand
ex-students join me in love and gratitude unbounded to these pioneers of the
great Southwest whose lives have paralleled somewhat, in time, this institution
for their generous contribution to what has now become Hardin-Simmons University.
I express the hope and offer the prayer that the ideals herein set out may
ever continue to be the center of the institution's life as it expresses itself through
the present and future generations.
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Hardin-Simmons University. The Bronco, Yearbook of Hardin-Simmons University, 1935, yearbook, 1935; Abilene, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth38631/m1/9/?rotate=270: accessed April 23, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Hardin-Simmons University Library.