Bowman Gray Foundation Gifting Wake Forest College's Medical School, Baptist Hospital, 1939

“Medical Gift Pleases Wake” from the August 8, 1939, issue of the Burlington Daily Times-News

Wake Forest Alumni and Other Supporters Proclaim Four-Year-School Program. Bowman Gray (1874-1935) was the former president and chairman of the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, Winston-Salem. 

The announcement Sunday by the Trustees of Wake Forest College of the acceptance of the benefactions of the Bowman Gray Foundation, which will result in the removal of the Wake Forest two-year medical school to the grounds of the Baptist hospital in Winston-Salem and the addition of the final two years of senior clinical medical work has received widespread acclaim among the alumni and other friends of the college who on every hand have expressed grateful appreciation.

Considerations which led to the acceptance of the offer and some of the benefits to be derived therefrom have been cited by college officials as follows:

The logical relationship of the four-year medical school of Wake Forest, operating in conjunction with the Baptist State Convention’s hospital at Winston-Salem offers an argument in favor of that location that is overwhelming. It is unique in this area of the State. Such a co-ordination immediately offers for use the medical school a wonderful opportunity to serve the public. In effect, it adds the hospital to the resources of the denominational effort in medical training and brings to its assistance the reserve of the medical school that in years to come will add tremendous prestige both to the college and the hospital.

The acceptance of the Gray memorial, in effect, amounts to the addition of a much needed science building on the Wake Forest campus. The William Amos Jackson Memorial Building, now released, will continue to serve its donors by housing adequately the pre-medical sciences. It contains splendid laboratories and classrooms sufficient for 250 students in the pre-medical sciences and in addition will afford an excellent departmental library, three research rooms, six offices, and six private laboratories for the professors.