Oxford, Feb. 16—Dr. Franklin P. Hobgood, president of Oxford college, died at St. Luke’s hospital, Richmond, Saturday night at 10:15. He went to St. Luke’s Hospital some weeks ago for a major operation which he underwent and was apparently recovering when he was stricken with paralysis last Tuesday from which he never revived. His son, Col. F.P. Hobgood Jr., was with him when the end came.
The remains will be brought to Oxford Sunday afternoon and the funeral will be held Monday afternoon at 3 o’clock.
Dr. Hobgood is survived by two sons, Col. Frank P. Hobgood, attorney of Greensboro; the second (Royall) died at the age of 21; and the third, Dr. J. Edward Hobgood of Thomasville, is a physician of the orphanage. He is also survived by two daughters, all residents of Oxford: Mrs. Rank W. Hancock and Mrs. Beverly S. Roystar, and Miss Carrie Hobgood died last December. Surviving are 11 grandchildren and 17 great-grandchildren.
In the remarkable rebuilding of North Carolina and of the South during the past 50 years, a most honorable and important part has been taken by the men and women of the school room. Prominent and useful in his field as promoter and participant was Dr. Franklin P. Hobgood of Oxford College, N.C. His career is worthy of record and should be an inspiration to the youth of today and tomorrow.
Professor Hobgood was born in Granville county, near Oxford, in 1847. His preparation for college was made at Horner school, to which he came daily on horseback from his home in the country. He is proud of the fact that he rode 7,000 miles while thus preparing for college. At night he studied by the flame of a beeswax wick, the day of oil and electric light being yet many years away.
As with many other young men of that day, Mr. Hobgood’s studies were interrupted by the Civil war. For six months during the latter part of that dread conflict, he served the Junior reserve brigade in the Confederate army.
Resuming his studies in 1866, he graduated in 1868 with the A.B. degree from Wake Forest college, being valedictorian of his class. Athletes will be interested in knowing that Dr. Hobgood was the captain of the first baseball nine ever organized at Wake Forest.
Dr. Hobgood’s career as a teacher began in 1869 when he became principal of a boy’s school at Reidsville, N.C., a position he held successfully for two years. In 1871 he moved to Raleigh and became president of the Raleigh female seminary. Here he remained for a decade, having as his patrons many of the state’s leading citizens, and as his pupils hundreds in the home, the church, the school room, and the state. And the same can be said of his more extended service as president of Oxford college, which began in 1880 and has continued without break or shadow up to his death.
President Hobgood’s educational ideals have been high—demanding superior intellectual culture, developing the finer social sensibilities, converging upon a life at once practical and refined, and, above all, centering in Christ and the great teacher, savior, and sovereign of the race.
Several positions of honor, trust have been occupied by President Hobgood. For six years he was chairman of the board of education in his home county of Granville. For one term he was president of the North Carolina teachers’ assembly. For eight years he has been a trustee of the State University at Chapel Hill.
Wake Forest recently honored its former student by conferring upon him the L.L.D. degree.
In religious work he has been conspicuous and efficient: deacon, Sunday school worker, and active in other capacities in the church of which he is a member; moderator of the Flat River Baptist association for 10 years; at different times vice president of the Baptist’s committee of the convention; trustee of Wake Forest College for 53 years, being president of the board for eight years; identified with the Thomasville orphanage since its inception—first, as member of the visiting committee of the Orphanage association, then and since (about 40 years) as trustee, and (since the death of Dr. W.R. Gwaltney) president of the board. His fidelity to duty is shown in the remarkable fact that in all the years of his service as trustee of Wake Forest College and of the orphanage, he has missed but one annual meeting of each of these bodies, both coming at a time when he was in a hospital.
He was a member of the committee to consider the location of the proposed State Medical college, and at the time of his death was senior deacon of the Oxford Baptist church. Though well on in the seventies, President Hobgood was in full harness and doing some of the best work of his life. His health was so good and his physique so robust that by reason of strength he was a living illustration of the zest of noon and the glow of sunset.
From the front page of the Durham Morning Herald, Feb. 17, 1924
No comments:
Post a Comment