Harriette Stollenwerck, a native of Alabama, was a distant cousin of Mary Gaston Stollenwerck Jones (Mrs. Bob Jones Sr.). A precocious student, she was already a college sophomore at age 17, when Monroe Parker proposed marriage in 1930. (Her parents thought her too young, and the couple waited until after she had graduated from BJC in 1933.) Parker took summer school courses at Chadek Conservatory of Music in Chattanooga, earned a Master of Music from Cincinnati Conservatory in 1942, and took further course work at the American Conservatory of Music, Chicago, and at UCLA. She was developing a gift for composing and arranging sacred music when Bob Jones Jr. wrote the original five stanzas of what was to become the University Hymn. Harriette composed the music, and the University Hymn premiered at Commencement in 1943. Three years later, Harriette was killed in a traffic accident while on her way with Monroe to visit the site of the new Greenville campus in 1946.