The presidency of Dr. Paul L. Boynton falls into two major parts. The first, defined by World War II and the impact of returning GIs on SFA, lasted from 1942 through 1947. The second part, defined by catching up with past growth and planning for future growth when the baby boom would hit, lasted from 1948 to Dr. Boynton’s death in the summer of 1958. The second era, discussed below and in the next few pages, started with the celebration of the college’s twenty-fifth anniversary and ended with a celebration of the college’s thirty-fifth anniversary and the ground-breaking of Boynton’s most cherished dream–a building for the fine arts departments which included an auditorium for SFA.

The second part of the Boynton era, approximately the 1950s, is perhaps the most difficult period to grasp in SFA’s history. Part of the problem lies in the nature of the archival material. There are virtually no “Boynton Papers” in the University Archives. The “scrapbook” which does exist is a paltry collection of newspaper clippings assembled by the staff of the East Texas Research Collection over the years. This statement is not a criticism of the archival staff; they have done the best they could with what information was a hand. There are, of course, official papers from the era–the Registrar’s records, the accounts, official reports, some letters, and blueprints.

One explanation: the fifties were not a period in which the government required “truck loads” of paper work; even the official reports of the era are minimal. Another reason for the scanty material possibly rests on Dr. Boynton’s shoulders or on the shoulders of his staff. Boynton, unlike Birdwell and Steen who were historians, either did not keep an eye on posterity by saving all of his material, or something yet undiscovered happened to the Boynton archive. This mystery awaits a deeper investigation. Ed Boynton, the president’s son has recently forwarded to the school what papers he could find. Finally, there is the explanation that must come from an analysis of the differences in the personality of the first three presidents. Birdwell, a good speaker and an educational politician who knew how to play to the gallery of the moment and posterity, kept a copy of almost every speech he ever made and most letters he wrote. Steen, a man skilled in research, if perhaps not Birdwell’s equal in rhetoric, knew the importance of documents and not only created the University Archive, but he also filled it up.

President Boynton was not a great speaker. His field of specialization, psychology, did not give him the easy, commonly understood phrases and analogies and insights which the public could understand. He was also an awkward writer. His welcoming greetings to the students every semester in The Pine Log, while free of intellectual jargon, had no natural flow. While obviously sincere and very consistent in message, Boynton’s speeches, if one takes the time to analyze them, were repetitive and pedantic. They frequently had little relationship to the moment; his timing was awkward.

Boynton’s talents lay elsewhere. His thoughts were deep despite their awkward wrappings, his instincts were solid, his work to solve a problem tireless, and his vision for SFA sound. History should afford to President Boynton a place of honor in the lineup of the college’s leaders. He would occupy this place of honor for his work during the war and the immediate post-war years alone, but the 1950s confirm this conclusion.

Enrollment

As 1948 opened, the Texas Supreme Court announced a decision that was to frame all of Boynton’s plans . The Court declared the constitutional amendment submitted in a special election in Aug. 23, 1947, providing building money through a fund from a part of the ad valorum taxes, to be constitutional. This action gave a green light to a more rational planning process on the various campuses. Boynton’s “master plan” and buildings, discussed in a separate article this week (See>), were now possible. It was time to celebrate. As he planned for the future, he gave the signal to others to look back over the first twenty five years. The twenty-fifth anniversary celebration, the Birdwell Homecoming of 1952, and the thirty-fifth anniversary are also covered in a separate article this week (See>)

A summary look at the enrollments during the Boynton presidency will give a clear indication of the problems Boynton was forced to cope with. In the fall before he was appointed, SFA had an enrollment of 793 students. In his first semester on campus, in the fall of 1942, the numbers had dropped to 491. The lowest fall enrollment during the war came in 1944, but in the spring terms of 1945, the bottom was reached with only 253 students. The Fall of 1945 only slightly higher at 359 students; compare this to the number 1000 in the fall of 1946. Just looking at the key indicator of fall enrollments, here are the numbers Boynton faced in the post-war era: 359 in 1945, 1000 in 1946, 1244 in 1947, 1264 in 1948, 1538 in 1949, and 1706 in 1950. Boynton scrambled to keep teachers in front of the students; housing, discussed earlier in the Series (story here), was even more critical.

Then the Korean War depletion hit SFA. In 1951, the enrollment in the fall dropped by 20%, and it continued to drop until the fall of 1954 when these veterans returned to school. By the fall of 1958, enrollment was at an all time high of 2017 students.

An important symbolic change for SFA occurred in 1949. A new name, first proposed back in 1945, dropped the word “Teachers” from the title of all of the state colleges. SFA officially became: "Stephen F. Austin State College.”

Ed Gaston, a student before and after World War II, joined the staff at SFA as Director of Public Information in 1950; Dr. Gaston served all of SFA’s first four presidents. When asked by Dr. Bobby Johnson recently to rank the presidents, Gaston diplomatically refused, but his answer was insightful: “Birdwell was the man who was absolutely essential to the founding of the college and gave it a good start. Had he been the second or the third or the fourth president, he probably would not have been very good at it. But, in his time he was good.” While Gaston said Dr. Boynton was more difficult to evaluate: “He had hard luck. ... I suspect that others could have met these challenges, but Dr. Boynton played the hand he was dealt pretty well. Dr. Boynton had the misfortune, ultimately, of working for one of the worst Board of Regents that ever came out of Austin, or at least was appointed from Austin.” The State Board of Regents, during this period, tried to micro-manage the school, and, in Gaston’s opinion, put unbearable pressure on Boynton which ultimately contributed to his heart attack in 1958.

After the war, and to some extent as a result of the Depression, Boynton found his faculty to be depleted, underpaid, overworked, and yet remarkably loyal and dedicated. “Boynton as an individual was pretty much the opposite of Dr. Birdwell,” continued Gaston. “Dr. Birdwell met people easily and was relaxed, and Dr. Boynton was very formal in his approach. On the other hand, Paul Boynton was the one who really built the faculty up.” To quote Mrs. Boynton, “He felt like the faculty in a frame classroom would still be a lot more valuable than a million dollar building.”

President Boynton immediately set out to concentrate on upgrading the faculty. He sought professionally trained people with advanced degrees, and he recruited the PhDs himself. “He interviewed every faculty member himself in those days. He had definite ideas about what he wanted, and he worked to fill those ideas,” observed Gaston, “and while Dr. Dr. Ralph Steen continued this push, the momentum was well under way for a good while.”

Dr. Gaston’s observation about Boynton’s conservatism on buildings is also confirmed by the interview with Mrs. Boynton. But, Gaston’s memory about Dr. Boynton’s being unwilling to gamble on dormitories like Dr. Steen did, is only partially supported by the documentary material. Boynton was acutely aware of the baby boom of the post-war years and the predictions of their needs in the 1960s. He did build dormitories to the extent which the Board would let him, but without the students in hand, the gamble which Steen later was going to make, was out of the question in the mid-1950s. The State Colleges were “big businesses,” and President Boynton would have had to make important additions to his staff before he could have dealt with these changes.

One of Boynton’s pet issues was the idea of the development of the individual. He returned to this theme over and over; he saw it as the best guarantee of a democracy, something which dictatorships could not tolerate. The President worked every semester to see that the faculty implemented a consistent, systematic program of student guidance. He also insisted on teachers being prepared, and he supported faculty when they wanted to further or supplement their education.

The Boyntons moved into a new presidential home in 1958. The idea of a new house for the first family had surfaced early in the 1930s. It was included in the Ten Year Plan of the late thirties, but the Depression, and later the war, got in the way. The realization of this dream of two decades began in May of 1956 when the old Birdwell house was moved to the east of the Home Management House on Starr Street, and Tom Hampton of Nacogdoches began building the new colonial-style brick home which exists today. While the frame house was being moved, the Boyntons to live in the garage apartment; the Boyntons then move back into the old house until the new one was finished. [The old house was moved with all the furniture in place; while the contractor from Cushing promised Mrs. Boynton that she did not even have to move her china out of the cabinets, she did.] The house was detached from its porte-cochere, which was new, and nothing but small saplings had to be cut to move the old structure.

Dr. and Mrs. Boynton hosted their first big student reception on the lawn of the new president’s house at the beginning of the summer term in June of 1958. The house and garden were elaborately decorated and Mrs. Maude Birdwell and her daughter Mrs. Jethro Meek of Indiana were there to help serve and greet the students.

One development in the town of Nacogdoches and one national item need to be mentioned in these years. The decision by local citizens to erect a community-owned hotel in the center of town was heralded by the headline in 1952: “NEW HOTEL BIGGEST STEP SINCE SFA FOUNDED.” The coming of the Fredonia Hotel did help SFA and quickly became an integral part of the memories of parents and students about their years and visits to Nacogdoches. A national issue in 1955 also caught the attention of SFA students: “INFANTILE PARALYSIS RATE RISES IN COLLEGE-AGE ADULTS.” The “infantile” part of the disease polio was a misnomer; the vaccine, developed by Dr. Jonas E. Salk, helped millions of students in the 1950s avoid the crippling disease.

Boynton’s untimely death

On August 7, 1958, Dr. Paul Boynton Boynton died of heart disease, suffering a coronary occlusion in his office at the college. He had been president of SFA only sixteen years. He was sixty years of age at the time. Under Dr. Boynton’s leadership, the college here enjoyed unparalleled growth, and he had just announced further plans for another classroom and office building for health instruction, an infirmary, a dormitory for men, another for women, and a building for the college food service.

In a resolution, the Board of Regents wrote of Dr. Boynton:

“In retrospect we see him, a young man whose intellectual and spiritual powers reflected stature far beyond his actual years, assuming control of a struggling young educational institution with a future made questionable by countless problems attendant to World War II. With keen insight, unswerving devotion to duty, and resourcefulness uncommon to an amazing degree, he met and solved the problems one by one. After the war, when steadily increasing enrollment produced seemingly unending problems equally complex but of a different nature, Dr. Boynton continued to be more than equal to the challenge. The results of his efforts are readily observable at every hand and will continue to be so long as the College itself exists. Impressive buildings and facilities of all types stand as inanimate tributes. Even more significant, thousands of persons in all walks of life constitute living memorials to Dr. Boynton. These are the men and women fashioned for useful lives by one who considered himself first and last a teacher.”

The Board of Regents named Dean Joe N. Gerber as acting President and authorized him to “enlist the services of Doctor Robert T. McKibben to assist him in the duties he will have ... without any additional charge or salary.” At their meeting on October 25, 1958, the Board elected Ralph W. Steen as the Third President of SFA, to be effective November 1, 1958.