And I remember hearing the voice of President Johnson saying, 'I will not seek, nor will I accept the nomination of my party for president of the United States.' And Vietnam was going on and all of that. And after Martin Luther King was assassinated, there was a lot of violence in the city, and there was a lot of demonstration. And so the field trip came to an end, but we still went to places like Boston and New York and the battlefields and all of that for the rest of that year. MAY '68 President Bruce Mclarty, his father Durley, his mother Sue and his siblings Kim, Karen and Karl lived in Washington, D. C. during May 1968. The McLartys moved to Washington, D. C. after learning Durley had the opportunity to receive special training there far a year. I photo courtesy of Bruce McLarty THE PREACHER'S 'HALLOWED GROUND' [We] came back from there and lived in th'e house from sixth grade on that my folks lived in until 20 years ago, long after I'd left home. And so when people ask me where I grew up I say Memphis. I went to public school until my junior year of high school, and my parents put us all in Harding Academy in Memphis. I graduated from there in the fall of '75. Even after five years of presidency at Harding, what am I? I'm really not a college president. I'm a preacher. You know, you scratch me, and that's what's beneath the surface and all. And I remember telling people from the fifth grade, Tm going to be a preacher.' When I came to Harding College in the fall of 1975, I was a Bible major and biblical languages minor and never really looked back on that. I loved Harding from the get go. I remember my first weekend on campus. I moved into Armstrong 109. That's hallowed ground. And then lived my last two years at Keller 31 0A. Those were my two dorm rooms. I went through in three years. My first weekend on campus, there was a retreat out at Wyldewood for Bible majors, and what is now Alpha Chi Malachi used to be called the Timothy Club. We went our there, and I remember writing a letter to my parents --- because we wrote letters to our parents back in those days and put a stamp on it --- just gushing about 'this is the most incredible thing I've ever experienced, and I'm around people who have a heart for the Lord and a vision for the world and who care.' I just thought I had died and gone to heaven. And some people collide with their expectations when they come to Harding. They expect it to be perfect and when it's not, they get disillusioned. My expectations, I think, were a lot more modest, and Harding far exceeded them. And so I had a great experience while I was here. I got in King's Men as a social club. I think my freshman year was the third year of the club on campus, and it was started by about a dozen guys from Alabama Christian College, which was a two year school at the time. They won A-team football two years in a row. These guys were beasts. They just came, and they were great athletes. My freshman year I think there were 35 of us that ca:me into the club, so the club more than doubled. And I don't think we ever won another athletic event ever, you know. We just killed all of that. 'DROP HIM NOW' When my wife and I met in the fall of my last year, she and I went to see "The Hiding Place." We had probably been flirting at the cafeteria for forever, you know, and I finally asked her to a movie and we go to "The Hiding Place." And the movie is so long, as y'all saw in chapel last year. . .. So after the movie we went over to where a El Almacen is now --- it used to be a Dairy Queen before that building was built. So we went over there, and we closed the place down. We just talked all night, you know, over a milkshake or something. And after that we didn't date anybody else. In January, we come back from break, and now we're dating steadily. She tells her mother one day on the phone, 'I'mgoing out with this guy named Bruce Mclarty.' Her mother says, 'What year is he?' She was a sophomore, and I was a senior. Wrong answer. Most mothers are terrified their daughter is going to get married and drop out of school, at least in our era that was the [case]. 'What's his major?' 'He's a Bible major.' Not sure that was the right answer. And she said, 'Well, what's he doing when he graduates in May?' And [Ann] said, 'Well, he's spending the summer in Africa.' Ann and I were walking and I said, 'Well, what did your mom say?' And she said, 'You don't want to know.' And I said, 'I do want to know!' And so we are right in front of the American Studies building, walking hand in hand, and ·she said her first words were 'drop him now.' So that was my future mother in law. Those were her first words about me: 'drop him now.' I graduated in May, and Ann was getting ready to start the nursing program. That summer I went with two guys I graduated with, MarkHayes and Dave Hogan, and we spent the summer in Ivory Coast, West Africa. And back in those days there was not a summer internship program like there is now. We had no idea how three guys could wind up in Africa, you know. We even contacted Exxon to see ifwe [could] work on a ship going across the ocean or something. We eventually found a church, Crieve Hall Church ofChrist, in Nashville, that had a place for us to stay ifwe could raise the money for the tickets. And so we went and had a summer there and a mission experience in Africa. I came back and started at [Harding School of Theology (HST)], and Ann was starting over here in the nursing program. So for two years, every other weekend or so, one of us would be going one direction or the other, and it's a marvel that she married me. It really is. Because two years of long distance was a long, long time. Well, we gee engaged along the way. And when she graduated in 1980, we got married three weeks later in Ohio. Our first home was in the Mississippi Delta in a little town called Marks, Mississippi, about an hour-and-a-half south of Memphis. She was a nursing grad, so she became the charge nurse at a little county hospital, and all she had to do was open her mouth and people would say, 'oh honey, what did you do to have to come down here?' And it's like there is just is no good reason for a girl from Ohio to be in the Mississippi Delta. But we were there, and had a great couple of years. Ann and Bruce Mclarty married in Ohio on May 31, 1980. After a date to see "The Hiding Place"and drink milkshakes during Bruce McLarty'ssenior year, the two never dated anyone else. I photo courtesy of Bruce McLarty 189 I PRESIDENT
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