Are these Baylor’s oldest living alumni?

The Baylor campus was a far different place in the early 1930s. For starters, almost the entire Baylor campus fit between Fifth and Seventh streets, bounded by Speight to the west and Waco Creek to the east. Instead of the SUB, there was a football field. Pat Neff was the new university president, not a building, and the newest facility on campus was Woman’s Memorial Dormitory. (For reference, here’s a campus map from 1939.)

Hard to imagine, right? But there are at least two Baylor Bears alive who don’t need to imagine it — because they lived it. At 105 years old, Geneva McCulloch Hughes, BA ’31, and McDonald W. Held, BA ’33, are believed to be Baylor’s oldest living alumni.

Geneva Hughes, or “Maw Maw” as her family knows her, graduated from Baylor in 1931. That same year she was named May Queen — a big campus honor in the days before Baylor had a Homecoming Queen. She had chatted on occasion with then-Baylor President Samuel Palmer Brooks, whose infamous Immortal Message was read at her graduation ceremony. In the speech’s most famous line, Brooks told that it was “to you I hand the torch” — and hand the torch Hughes did, to her son and grandson, each of whom would also earn Baylor degrees.

After graduation, Hughes worked as an elementary school teacher in Marlin (just outside Waco) for more than 50 years. Baylor President Ken Starr paid a visit to Hughes a few years ago and listened to stories of 1930s Baylor life. At 105, her memory is not as sharp as it once was, but some things are never forgotten. Before Judge Starr left, he joined her family in singing “That Good Old Baylor Line.” Hughes put her claw up and sang every word. “It made us cry, the way she was singing it,” says her son, Mac Hughes, BBA ’73. “I think (President Starr) kind of shed a tear, too.”

Four months older than Hughes, “Don” Held’s first semester at Baylor was during the stock market crash of November 1929. He played freshman football and basketball under student coach Weir Washam, who two years earlier had survived the Immortal Ten bus accident. Held was president of the junior class, a member of Chamber and president of the Baptist Student Union, where George W. Truett would sometimes speak for Wednesday night services in the brand-new Waco Hall. Held graduated in 1933, just one year after the first “All-University Day” (now Diadeloso).

Held’s father, a popular Baptist preacher, Austrian immigrant and missionary to European immigrants in Waco, graduated from Baylor with Pat Neff. Don’s younger brother Colbert graduated in 1938 and later served as a professor of history and Diplomat-in-Residence at Baylor. (Coincidentally, Colbert now lives less than a mile from Hughes here in Waco.)

Sic ’em, Baylor centenarians!

[Know of an even older Baylor graduate? Let us know!]