STUDENT LIFE I INTERNATIOANL I SOCIALCLUBS I ACADEMICS I PEOPLE I LEADERSHIP I ATHLETICS I ORGANIZATIONS President Bruce Mclarty grew up in a strong family with a life-long goal to be a preacher which led to his inauguration as Harding's fifth president on Sept. 20, 2013. Harding's fifth president, Dr. Bruce M clarty, welcomedfo ur members ofthe Petit Jean yearbook staffinto his home on Oct. 23, 2018. McLarty shared the narrative ofhis life beginning with his birth and ending with the moment he learned that he had been selected as the fifth and oldest president of Harding University. 1his is his story in his words: interview by Megan Stroud BLESSED BY FAMILY I am the oldest of four children in my family, born to Mom and Dad when they were students at Tennessee Tech University. My parents met each other because my mom's sister married my dad's brother, so I've gotten double first cousins, which is legal in all 50 states.. . . My mom and dad met when my dad and his parents came up to meet the new in-laws. Dad is from near Oxford, Mississippi, and mom is from near Cookeville, Tennessee --- Gainesboro, Tennessee. A lot of their courrship was when dad was in the Air Force, and it was by letters. He proposed over the mail, and she accepted through the mail. He got released on the east coast for a leave, bought a truck, drove to Gainesboro, Tennessee, and picked her up. They went to Booneville, Mississippi, where they were going to meet his parents, and a preacher was waiting. They got married and all, and then they drove to Sacramento. When they came back from Sacramento, they started at Tennessee Tech. Dad became an engineer, and I was born while they were in school there. Mom could never get a clear TB skin test, so they put her in the TB hospital, and I was born in the TB hospital in Nashville,Tennessee. ... But because of that, my mom's parents took care of me the first four months of my life, and I always In October of 1967, President Bruce Mcl arty spends his fifth grade year in Washington, D. C. While his family lived there during 1967-1968, Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy were assassinated, causing a lot of violence and demonstration in the city. I photo courtesy of Bruce McLarty had a bonded relationship with them. A big piece of the story of who I am and my life and everything is I was blessed with four incred·ible grandparents, and they all four hold a very dear place in my heart. ... When Ann and I met here at Harding, one of the points of connection that we had immediately was she had very dear connections with her grandparents. I really didn't know her at all other than name, but [one] Wednesday night I looked over, and she was sitting in the middle of this sea of white-headed ladies. I just, you know, I just had a weakness for that. When I was about two-and-a-half years old, Mom and dad had a set of triplets, and they lived a portion of a day. Each of them died along through the day and all. Two years ago now, Mom turned 80 and, for her birthday, we kids got together and said 'Let's go back and spend two days just traveling around Nashvilleand around Gainesboro and Cookeville, going to places that are significant in mom's life.' It was just an incredible experience. We ended up at the triplets' grave, and mom and dad told us the stories that we'd all heard bits and pieces [of], but we'd never heard as much as we heard that day and all. ... Thar was a piece of my family story. [It] wasn't talked about a whole lot, but it was something that my little sisters Jean, Jane and Joan, who died the day of their birth, [were] just always a part of the family story. Mom and Dad graduated from Tennessee Tech when I was three years old, and Dad's first job as a civil engineer --- his whole career was with the Corp of Engineers --- was in Oklahoma. He was working on Lake Eufaula. All of my dad's buddies, you know, as a little three-year-old, they would cell me, 'You're going to Oklahoma. There's Indians out there you know.' I grew up in the era of Roy Rogers and cowboys and Indians and all this kind of stuff. Dad went out and got us set up. I came our with mom. I wore my six shooters [and cowboy hat] on the Greyhound bus all the way out to Oklahoma. I was ready for everything, you know, but we lived there for a couple of years, moved to Lierle Rock, and I starred school in Little Rock. I didn't go to kindergarten. Mom was a school teacher, and she caught me my ABC's and numbers and all that. I came through in an era where not everybody went to kindergarten. I started first grade at Wilson Elementary. When we had Ruby Bridges [at Harding] a couple ofyears ago, it just brought all that rushing back to me because, in my elementary school, there were twin girls who were the first African Americans in my school. I had one of the sisters in my first-grade class and the other one in my second-grade class. I don't know their names, but I have the pictures. I've made two trips to the Little Rock School Board to see if they could help me identify these 61-year-old women now because Ann and I would love to have dinner with them. In first and second grade I'm like everybody else, I'm just trying to survive, you know, figure out playground dynamics and rules and all that, and I would just love to know what it was like for them with the overlay of the whole race thing going on... . They followed us a great deal in the news because [of] being in Little Rock, and we were the kids that were born the year of central high school --- 1957. When I was five years old, my dad was baptized at the old Pulaski Heights Church of Christ in Little Rock, Arkansas. I slept through the whole thing on the pew, but from all of my memory of my life, my folks have been very, very involved with church, always working, helping, always at every meeting of church. All that changed when I was five years old and became what it was in all of my growing up. Mom and dad announced to us that we were going to have an addition to the family, and we found out it was going to be two. And so we had a twin brother and sister that were born when I was seven years old. Dad built a house for us in another part of Little Rock because we were in a two-bedroom house. 'A YEAR-LONG FIELD TRIP' We moved to Memphis at the end of my fourth grade [year], and within six weeks we got word chat dad had received this honor where he was going to get a year of special training in Washington, D.C. so my fifth grade year was in Washington, D.C. It was the perfect age to get something like that because I was 10 years old, and it was like a year-long field trip to Washington, D.C. Every Saturday the folks would roll us out of bed, and we would go to the Smithsonian or Washington Monument or White House or Mount Vernon or something like that. It was just magical along that line. For a 10 year old, it was just perfect. It was perfect timing and all. The year we were up there was the school year '67-'68, and it was a terrible year in America. It was the year that Martin Luther King [Jr.] was assassinated, the year Bobby Kennedy was assassinated. I remember being in my bed and hearing my parents, watching our little black and white TV in the living room. 188
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