In the fall of 1958, the laminated wood arches first used to support the 1959 gym—and currently the Activity Center—arrived in Greenville from Minnesota, where they’d been fabricated. Here R. K. Johnson (1910-1971) sits atop eight of the sixteen arches sent via rail on two special flatcars. A circuitous route had been devised to avoid tunnels and low overpasses. The arches were presumably in the process of being transferred from rail cars to trucks.

The Tempest (1937): Dr. Bob Jr. as Prospero and “Miss Holmes” (soon to be Mrs. Bob Jones Jr.) as Miranda, his daughter. They were married in June 1938.

In October 2010, Unusual Films shot a scene of Milltown Pride in the historic Pelzer Auditorium, a scene in which David Burke played Billy Sunday and Joel Robinson played his song leader Homer Rodeheaver. The trombone actually belonged to Rodeheaver and is in the BJU Archives. This film photo references a real photo taken of Rodeheaver and Sunday in Los Angeles in 1917. 

First BJC student body and faculty, 1927-28

Mrs. Stenholm filming Beyond the Night, 1981-82.

Registration at Mack Library, September 8, 1977, with Bruce McAllister holding the door.

The practice studios (1947-1990) were on South Drive behind Johnson, today a parking lot across from the stadium. (Multiple attempts were made to get students to stop calling them “practice shacks,” none of them successful.)

Old Main, Cleveland campus, early spring. Dr. Bob Sr. at lower left.

Little Moby’s Corner, the Cleveland version of a Student Center, 1940s.

Two campus postcards from the early 1950s: one of the Dining Common and the other of the Administration Building. These “linen” postcards, a type manufactured in the United States from the 1930s to the 1950s, weren’t made of linen but from paper with a high cotton rag content and given a textured surface that suggested linen. Created from black-and-white photos, the cards were retouched—sometimes with considerable artistic license—in saturated and exaggerated colors. These particular cards were published by the Asheville Postcard Company (1913-1977). In the mid-1950s, cards like these probably cost 5 cents apiece, plus 2 or 3 cents to mail.

Library dedication, September 6, 1980. L to R: Alma Overbey, Margaret Bald, Joe Allen, Gene Elliott.

Jones family, Faculty Body, Gold Rush Daze.

Hanging the library chandelier, 1980. Photos taken by Gene Elliott, library director.

Part of the front campus entry, nicknamed the Giraffe—photo taken in 2007 during BJU’s 80^th year.

Alice Gingery, Joan Mulfinger, George Mulfinger, late 1960s

Dale King (1930-2014) posing with an English class. A still from the promotional film Gateway to a Miracle (1967). Note the original, carpetless, concrete floor of the Alumni Building and the fact that King is resting his feet on a notebook, presumably to give him a better position on the edge of the desk during multiple takes.

On July 3, 1976, BJU dedicated a memorial plaque on the former Florida campus as part of its 50^th anniversary celebration.

By every human measure, this should have been the end of a totally bankrupt school at the bottom of the Depression.

Nemorino (Gail Gingery) buys elixir from Dr. Dulcamara (Dwight Gustafson).

Spartan dorm room on the Florida campus.

In 1952, during a world tour of mission fields, Bob Jones Sr. presented honorary degrees to Generalissimo and Madame Chiang Kai-shek in Taipei, Taiwan. In return, Chiang gave BJU two dawn redwoods. Today you can buy a two-foot specimen online for somewhere between $25 and $100; but in 1952, they were truly exotic, having only recently been discovered in a remote valley in China, “living fossils” that attracted attention from botanists around the world. The BJU tree is a direct clone of one of those Chinese trees.

One of the two gift trees was planted by the library and soon died. The other one, planted just off Wade Hampton near the current Dining Common, is now the tallest tree on campus. Although Metasequoia glyptostroboides is the shortest of the redwoods and deciduous like the bald cypress, it’s a fast grower and has the potential to reach 165 feet—the height of a 15-story building—and live for hundreds of years.

…pictured appropriately with two dictionaries. On the far left, Ernest Campbell (1923-2010), later a noted modernist theologian; on the far right, Otis Holmes (1920-2009), brother of Fannie May Jones. To his left is Heyward Wing-Hee Wong (1917-2003), later noted as a writer of Chinese hymns.

Looks heavy enough to be an armored car. But then gas was only about 30¢ a gallon.

Valentine’s Day promotion—a “kissing booth”—at the BJU Bookstore, 1995. In the photo, Shannon Simpson Milligan ’95 is passing out Hershey Kisses.

As Dr. Bob Jones Sr.’s health declined, BJU faculty/staff were encouraged to honor his 80th birthday by sponsoring a 1964 trip around the world for him and his wife—an incongruous choice in view of his declining health and life-long disinterest in sightseeing. Dr. Bob was persuaded that his presence might encourage missionary alumni along the way, but he remained troubled that BJU employees had been pressured to give from their meager salaries. For weeks he badgered R. K. Johnson to find some way to return the money without hurting anyone’s feelings. “You work it out,” he said. “Give them a special bonus or something. I feel terrible about this.”

Photo taken at GSP, January 1964. L to R: Bob Jones III, Beneth Jones, Jon Jones, Mary Gaston Jones, Dr. Bob, and Fannie May Jones.

Bob Jones Sr. with Billy and Nell Sunday, Cleveland campus, 1934.

An aerial view of front campus in the early 1990s. Notice this is before the parking garage was constructed behind Rodeheaver Auditorium.