Ed as a Wake Forest Student
“I always thought I’d be a lawyer. I always wanted to help people through the power of speech the way a surgeon helped people through the power of his hands.” Ed Christman.
This page is a work-in-progress
In 1947, Edgar Christman enrolled as a freshman at Wake Forest College in Wake Forest, NC. He came to the campus sight-unseen, having chosen it for its NC location. He had applied to but was not accepted at UNC-Chapel Hill: Wake Forest was his destiny. Ed planned to major in history and become an attorney.
Ed lived at first in the chapel basement with 75 roommates, and then he moved to a barracks apartment with nine roommates. Meals were available at the fraternity houses, and he ended up joining Lambda Chi Alpha. Ed participated in the student legislature, served on the honor council, and was on the debate team. He became a member of the Baptist Student Union and served on the NC BSU Council as Vice President.
During the 1949-1950 school years, Ed ran for student body president. On the face of it, this was not a big deal, however at the time it was. The fraternities on campus controlled the student government. A group of fraternities could choose a slate of candidates, vote secretly as a block and thus defeat the remaining fraternities and independents.
Ed thought that this system was unfair. Though a member of Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity, he ran on his own for student body president. The fraternity did not support his candidacy, and his roommate did not speak to him for a week. He lost the election but he broke the system and was satisfied. The fraternities were not able to control elections after that.
He also became a member of the Wake Forest Baptist Church and was baptized by immersion by Pastor Glenn Blackburn, whom he refers to as a good preacher and an important mentor. Ed served as the Superintendent of the College Sunday School.
Ed finished his undergraduate work in three years plus three summers, graduating in 1950 Cum Laude with a BA in History. He then applied to the Wake Forest Law School and was admitted. He has said “I always thought I’d be a lawyer. I always wanted to help people through the power of speech the way a surgeon helped people through the power of his hands.” (Interview with Ellen Dockham 2003).
During this time, plans were being made for Wake Forest College to move from the Wake Forest North Carolina campus to the “Reynolda campus” in Winston-Salem. Groundbreaking was held in 1951, and President Truman attended, not only to turn the first spade of ground but also to deliver a speech. Ed was among the 14 bus loads of students to attend, and he was one of the ushers.
Ed reflected on this momentous step taken by President Harold Tribble in saying, “By the grace of God, we had as president a man who was fearless, who saw the future, who saw us becoming a university. We had the right man for the job in spite of incredible resistance. And he was right.” (Interview with Ellen Dockham 2003).
Wake Forest School of Law and Beyond
In fall 1950 Ed began law school, rooming with his good friend Lonnie B. Williams. He married his sweetheart Jean Carolyn Sholar in December 1952 at the Wake Forest Baptist Church. (Read How Ed met Jean!) Ed became president of the student bar association and was third in his class of 1953.
On the edge of a legal career, however he got a call to a different path, the ministry. In the spring of 1953, Dr. Robert J. McCracken, the pastor of Riverside Baptist Church in New York City, spoke at Religious Emphasis Week at Wake Forest. During this time, Ed experienced a clear call to the ministry and to attend seminary. He applied to Southeastern Seminary and would begin that fall.
But not one to leave a loose end, he took the N.C. bar exam and interviewed for two jobs. This was all it took for him to admit to himself that this door was closed. He did continue to take the bar and passed on the third attempt. Ed was licensed as an attorney in Wake County, North Carolina. on August 6, 1955, by Dr. I. Beverly Lake. He took the oath, swearing to “truly and honestly demean himself in the practice of an attorney according to the best of my knowledge and ability, so help me God. “ [In 1970, the Wake Forest University School of Law began to confer the Juris Doctor (J.D.) degree to replace the previous L.L.B. degree. At this time, previous graduates were also honored with the J.D. , hence Ed's having a JD.]
By this time, he was well into his studies at Southeastern and already working at Wake Forest College part-time as the Baptist Campus Ministry.
Throughout these school years and also at Southeastern, Ed was an excellent student despite his limited vision. He wore heavy, thick reading glasses but even these were not enough when he began to study Hebrew and Greek during Seminary. He went to an eye doctor in Durham who gave him some glasses with telescopic lens that were so heavy that he had to use Kleenex pads on his ears to cushion the weight. The skeptical doctor couldn’t believe no one had read for him in college or in law school.
Ed with his big glasses in 1956, photo by Irving Grigg.
Ed commented later, “It never occurred to me that I couldn’t do it. If you’ve been limited in vision all along, you don’t have anything to feel badly about; it’s your frame of reference. I could have had poor hearing; I could have had one foot. I got to do everything. I got to play baseball in the neighborhood. I ran on the track team one year.”
The next stop was to be Southeastern Seminary, on the Wake Forest campus.
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