Whether she actually said it is beside the point. What’s pertinent is the fact the story continues to resonate with the Golden Bears at their annual Homecoming reunion.

I first came across the item in 1982 while researching the class of 1932 prior to its 50-year class reunion.

Since 1982, I’ve had the honor of addressing each 50-year reunion class and, yes, I’ve probably told that same story every year, along with oft-told stories relating to Dr. Virginia Craig, Professor James W. Shannon, Coach Andy McDonald, President Roy Ellis, etc.

The aforementioned campus luminaries retired in the mid 1950s to early ’60s, so most of the post-1960 classes don’t identify with them as readily. But most of the Golden Bears (graduates of 50 years ago and older) do.

For example, most have their own stories about Dr. Craig, who rode her bicycle around campus, lived with her also-single sister, Ellen, in a white bungalow on Belmont Street (a couple of doors down from the football stadium) and once told her class she had personally experienced everything except death and childbirth.

“I heard her say it,” students through the years have insisted.

This year, a Golden Bear said she first heard of Virginia Craig when she was a freshman. Word spread through the Administration Building that Dr. Craig, on her bicycle, had just tangled with a pickup truck at the corner of Kings Avenue and Lombard Street.

“Was she hurt?” someone asked.

The reply: “No, but they say the truck was totaled!”

Although stories of the Craigs and Wells and Shannons may not be as prevalent as they once were, it’s evident Missouri State grads continue to hold their past teachers in high esteem.

Charles Strickland, a former championship debater, recently passed along these comments: “What I remember best about those days were the wonderful teachers who set a standard that was rarely matched during my career as a professor of history and education. I remember especially Virginia Craig, who drank only bottled water, and told us the only public issue she considered above debate was the Prohibition amendment. She was honest to a fault and once told me ‘Mr. Strickland (she never called us by our first name), you may have out-argued me, but you have not persuaded me.’ ”

He went on to say, “Dr. Harry Siceluff (education) made me think. Bruce Bassett (speech and theatre) once stopped me in the hall and said he needed me to play the gentleman caller in ‘Glass Menagerie.’ As a result of that, I spent the next 55 years in community theatre. Anna Lou Blair (foreign languages) sought me out and persuaded me to apply for a Fulbright Exchange Scholarship, which I did. It opened up a whole new world to me outside the U.S.”

He concluded by noting the college “provided me the opportunity to meet people like this, yet charged only $29.50 per quarter for something they called an incidental fee.”

Dave West writes that he graduated in 1963 and “figured my entire undergraduate degree cost me less than $1,000.” He said he took one summer off to attend 13 weeks of Marine Corps training. “When I got there, I was in a platoon with students from Yale, Fordham and other big-name schools. I feared competing with them but I learned quickly that I had no reason to. My SMS education was as good or better than theirs.”

When he went on to a big-name grad school, he added, his first class was on video tape. “I realized then that nearly every hour of instruction I had at SMS was from a PhD.”

And on and on … from so many who hold yesterday’s professors in today’s thoughts.

As for Dean Wells’ “skirt” comment: I don’t know if she said it, but I wouldn’t bet against it.

Don Payton, ’50, is former information services director at Missouri State University.