WACO, Texas (ABP) — More than 1,300 family and friends flooded First Baptist Church in Waco, Texas, May 30, to bid farewell to Herb Reynolds, the 11th president of Baylor University.
Reynolds died of an apparent heart attack May 25, a day after he and his wife, Joy, arrived at their summer home in Angel Fire, N.M. He was 77.
“A great leader has fallen, and he has left an empty space in our hearts, in our lives, in our community,” Paul Powell, dean of Baylor's George W. Truett Theological Seminary and a friend of Reynolds' for 26 years, told the crowd.
Reynolds loved Christ and the church, his country, Baylor, and his family, Powell said.
“He was a sinner saved by grace, and he never pretended to be anything different. Herb loved the church and gave himself to it,” he declared. He noted that Reynolds — a layman — was a faithful member, deacon and Sunday school teacher at First Baptist Church in Waco.
Reynolds spent a 20-year career in the Air Force and first arrived at Baylor to teach in the school's Air Force ROTC program. At Baylor, he earned master's and doctoral degrees in psychology and served as an assistant professor of aerospace studies and as a teaching fellow in psychology.
With the Air Force, he directed research for the Aeromedical Research Laboratories at Alamogordo, N.M., and worked with NASA. Reynolds returned to Baylor as executive vice president in 1969. He became president in 1981, and retired in 1995, becoming the university's chancellor. He retired from that post in 2000.
In the memorial service, Powell cited a litany of Reynolds' achievements as president: $180 million spent in new and renovated facilities, an endowment that quadrupled, and overall assets that tripled — all with no increase in indebtedness. Also during Reynolds' tenure, Baylor joined the Big 12 as the only private university in one of the nation's major athletic conferences.
“Those achievements mark his greatness. He is one of the greatest presidents in Baylor history,” Powell said. Reynolds later served as president emeritus and chancellor.
Reynolds left two key legacies, Powell said. The first was Baylor regents' 1990 action to change the school's charter. That enabled the university to select three-quarters of its own board and freed Baylor from the control of the Baptist General Convention of Texas.
“Herb had no desire to separate from Baptists. He was a Baptist through and through,” Powell said. “But he wanted to preserve Baylor. He did not want Baylor to become a fundamentalist Bible school. He took a lot of heat — a lot of heat — to accomplish what was right.”
Reynolds' second legacy is Baylor's George W. Truett Theological Seminary, Powell declared.
“To start a seminary before it was needed [and] to name it after the greatest pastor-preacher to come out of Texas and maybe the United States” were marks of Reynolds' brilliance, he added. Truett was the longtime pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas and a famous advocate of religious freedom and church-state separation.
“Today, George W. Truett Seminary is the premier Baptist seminary in the world. We are where we are today more due to Herbert H. Reynolds than to any other person.”
Reynolds had been married almost 57 years, and his three children also paid tribute to their father during the service.
“Dad is one who believed talk is cheap. He did not wear his faith on his sleeve,” Kent Reynolds said, calling his father a smart, well-read man of action. The elder Reynolds' favorite Scripture passage was Mark 12:30-31, Kent Reynolds said: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.… You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
His favorite quotation was a line often attributed to St. Francis of Assisi: “Preach the gospel at all times, and if necessary, use words,” Kent Reynolds said.
“Dad taught us faith and intellect are not mutually exclusive. I thought we might have him a few more years,” Kevin Reynolds said. “And perhaps we would have if he had stopped caring and giving himself away.”
Powell told the crowd that the last time he talked with Reynolds about his funeral service was in a car after the long funeral of a mutual friend.
“Paul, don't go on and on and on,” Reynolds told his friend. “You just tell them I was a pretty good guy most of the time” and end the service quickly.
“Herbert Reynolds was a good guy most of the time,” Powell told the crowd. “And he was my friend all the time, and he was a friend of all true Baptists all the time.”
-30-
Read more:
Herb Reynolds, former Baylor president, dead at 77 (5/25/2007)