Legacy

A legacy is a gift, something left behind for someone else for their benefit to enjoy or from which more can be learned. Sure, a legacy can be detrimental, the uncle no one mentions at Thanksgiving. But most often it is not.

Usually, a legacy leaves a positive impact on the recipient(s), something cherished, whether financially or just in memory, to be protected or, maybe, even then turned into something bigger.

Sevier County, Tennessee was a much different place in 1885 than, say, 1985. But really, so was most of East Tennessee

Still a rural frontier, one of pioneers and mountain folk, it was nearly 60 years before the President of the United States, Franklin D. Roosevelt, stood at Newfound Gap and dedicated the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. It was, in some cases, 100 years removed from that park,generating the large numbers of visitors annually that helped birth Ripley’s Aquarium of the Smokies and Dollywood, The Titanic and Tanger, sky lifts and shopping.

It was into this late 19^th-Century Sevier County, the one of pioneers, August 11, 1885, Melvin Houston Baker was born. Little did anyone know the pioneer he would be, or the legacy he would leave.

Information on Melvin’s early years is scant. At least four sources list August 11,1885 as his date of birth. One says the same date in 1886. We will go with the majority. The rest states he was born “into humble beginnings” in Sevierville to Joseph and Amanda B. (Fox) Baker. And that is pretty much is it until his early 20s when we learn, from 1908 to 1912, he was a salesman for the Miller Manufacturing Company. He also, in 1911, graduated from Carson-Newman University – then Carson and Newman College.

His business acumen was noticed when he moved from Miller Manufacturing to a sales position with the Beaver Board Company. “For Better Walls and Ceilings” use Beaver Board the advertisements proclaimed. In two short years, he became sales manager where he stayed for eight years. From 1922 to 1924 Baker served as vice-president of the American Manufacturers Foreign Credit Underwriters. 

Then it was time to strike out on his own. With two partners, he founded the National Gypsum Company, a supplier of building and construction materials. He started as vice president, where he spent three years. He then was elected president and CEO, posts he held for the next 37 years until he retired in 1965.

He grew his company and the communities he served. Through “The Great Depression” to the post-war building boom of the 1940s and ‘50s, National Gypsum moved from a company making one product in one location to a widely diversified organization with plants in a couple dozen cities and offices in at least 14 more.

Next month, National Gypsum celebrates its 100^th Anniversary.

Melvin did not just invest his time and focus on his company. True to the Carson-Newman mission of helping our students reach their full potential as educated citizens and worldwide servant-leaders, Melvin followed suit.

He was very active in both social and charitable efforts. At different times in his career, he was a director of at least nine major business organizations and10 civic groups, including the Buffalo Area Chamber of Commerce, American Cancer Crusade and war relief efforts in Russian and Britian.

For his accomplishments and patterns of “giving back” Melvin was the recipient of five honorary university degrees and, to this day, a faculty position in American Enterprise at the University of Buffalo is the Melvin H. Baker professorship. He was named by the Harvard Business School one of the Great American Business Leaders of the 20^th Century.

Even after retirement, he served on the Board of Directors for National Gypsum for nine more years and then as a consultant until his passing in 1976.

Melvin Baker’s legacy goes much deeper than that. All the way back to Mossy Creek in fact.

More than 72 years ago, Melvin Baker gave back to his alma mater in the manner of an endowed scholarship. Signed by Melvin and then-president Harley Fite, it remains in the Carson-Newman files as the oldest active scholarship at Mossy Creek. Through nearly three-quarters of a century, hundreds of students have received scholarships from Melvin Baker’s gift. 

And they still do today. 

It is very possible that neither Melvin Baker nor Dr. Harley Fite imagined students still receiving financial assistance going on 80 years after Baker honored his alma mater with a gift. Many of those recipients may not otherwise have been able to attend college at Mossy Creek. In fact, that was one of Baker’s concerns.

As we said, a legacy can leave a positive impact on the recipient(s), something cherished, whether financially or just in memory, to be protected or, maybe, even then turned into something bigger.

It is more possible, even probable, students receiving this assistance do not know the story of Melvin Baker. But they are part of his legacy, more than seven decades in the making. Maybe now they will know. Hopefully many others will too. 

And with that, there may come an awareness of the impact a legacy like that can have on so many – even long after we are gone.