Mrs. Thelma Bearden Bridges, age 90, of Rusk County was only 16 when she came to SFA to complete her high school education in the sub-college. “My father was a farmer and my mother a homemaker.” No one from the Patrick Community had ever gone to college before, but with the opening of SFA, many people were talking about it. “There was a Mansinger girl and boy, cousin's of mine, and a Wallace boy, and there were several from Pine Hill who were planning on going down there. Of course I knew them - Pine Hill and Long Branch were just nearly one little community ­everybody knew everybody.” Since there were no higher grades at her rural school, she either had to go to Carthage or Nacogdoches. She chose SFA.

There was no formal application process. “We just went down there and registered.” She lived with Mrs. Lowery on Starr Avenue. Her room was large, but at first she had only one double bed; she and her roommate slept together. Her first roommate was a cousin, Gertie Mae Mansinger, her best friend from home. She later had other roommates. “We had a lavatory and a closet and that's all I remember about it.” They took their meals there, too.

Could you describe for me what you would consider a typical day?

“We'd get up and have breakfast. Everybody had to be at school at eight o'clock anyhow. We'd walk up Starr Avenue about a block or two and turn right and go in front of the new homes between there and the woods - I think some of the professors lived there, maybe one of the Fergusons. We'd go behind the house and there was a barbed wire fence that separated that land from the college. We'd crawl through that barbed wire fence and there were pig trails or cow trails all through those woods [Griffith Park.] We'd cut through there to the college.” There were only three buildings on campus when she started in 1924, isolated in a large wooded area.

In the winter, it took about fifteen minutes to walk to the Austin Building, and it was sometimes hazardous. “We had to wear hose and heels then,” she continued. “There was this family that lived between Starr Avenue and the Vista that had big old dogs. ... One ran out and reard up on my leg and just pulled a runner from my knee to my ankle.”

Her social life revolved around the boarding house. “I didn’t get into any clubs. I was shy. ... [but] we had lots of our friends around us. Bob and Marty Grimes lived next door ... and below us [on the street] was the boy’s dormitory. The Moore house they called it. We knew all those boys. ... Our house mother, Mrs. Lowery, drove us out there [to Fern Lake], and we took a picnic supper. Some of us went swimming, but I couldn’t swim. We had a real nice time.”

When asked if she had a car, she responded that she did not. “Our house mother had a car, and she either took us, or we walked. We’d go to the bakery and buy a bag of candy - Hershey kisses mostly, and go up the road eating Hershey kisses.”

When a boy in the next boarding house came down with typhoid fever, they all had to rush to get a vaccination. “We couldn’t leave the house; we were quarantined.” Dr. Edgar McKinney vaccinated her, and she was sick for a week with temperature. She described another occasion when she was sick with the flu that her brother hitchhiked down to see how she was doing. Miss Helen Hickman, the SFA nurse came over and gave her medicine.

Like many students at the time, the young Miss Bearden did not go straight through her college education. She interrupted her studies by working as a teacher in Panola County. As she laughed she said, “I think I have 8 pupils in five grades!” After consolidation, she moved to a larger school in Chapman where she met her future husband Tom Bridges. They had actually both been at SFA, but they did not know each other at the time. Mrs. Bridges continued, “I knew his name, but mama told me not to have anything to do with those football players [laughter]. I avoided them.” While she was not prepared at first to like him even in their later meeting, she fell for him and they married in 1931.

Mrs. Thelma Bearden Bridges is my grandmother. She never finished SFA, but she inspired others to do so. Fifteen members of the Bridges family went to SFA, the vast majority graduating with their bachelor’s degrees. There was even one homecoming queen! SFA runs deep on both sides of my family, however. Nine of my father’s relatives attended SFA, and one aunt, Miss Mary Ann McKinney was teaching at SFA while my grandmother Bridges was attending. Celebrating SFA’s birthday for me is a family affair.