It was better for them on the campus of the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor if they were seen and not heard. They were on campus when the student body was almost exclusively female. Campus boys were stalwarts on campus for half a century that ended in the early 1970s.
In exchange for working security or providing campus support in a score of other ways, a select group of young men got an opportunity at a debt-free education.
They were plucked from different families, boys with promise in need of financial assistance or sometimes in need of learning the value of a strong work ethic.
Some of the females on the Baptist school's campus likely described the young men as the salt that brought savor to their college experience. Others might have seen the boys as an annoyance or a necessary evil.
Whatever the opinion people had of those worker bees, there is no disputing today that the stories from their lips are some of the most colorful in the school's history.
Bobby Johnson, 60, is a director of alumni development at UMHB, but the first time he ever stepped on campus was to become a campus boy in the late 1960s.
His biology teacher his freshman year was Dr. C.L. York, a former campus boy himself.
"He was a character," Johnson said. "He could tell you story after story."
As a campus boy Johnson had a lot of different jobs on campus, including mowing the lawn, but perhaps his most interesting story is how he even ended up on campus in the first place.
Johnson came from a large family in southern Texas. He had eight brothers and sisters.
His trip to UMHB was brought on by a night in jail.
"The summer before I came to UMHB I got into a scuffle at a bowling alley," Johnson said. "My preacher brother bailed me out of jail, put me on a bus and sent me to Belton.
"He said, 'You're going to college. You're not going to stay here.' Had it not been for my older brother, I doubt I would have ever gone to school. He had a lot more vision than I had."
The inflection in Johnson's voice is distinct when he speaks about his brother and the gratitude he has for the road of success his brother placed him on decades ago.
"Now I've been on staff here at UMHB for 26 years," he said. "It has been one of the best things that has ever happened to me. I'll tell you that."
York may well be the most prominent of the campus boys. Now deceased, the York Science Center on campus bears his name.
While York's future standing among former campus boys was impossible to determine when he arrived on campus in 1927, a business manager did pick up on a skill he had previously developed.
On his second day on campus York said the man asked him and another young man to meet Roy Finch, a farm hand at the college, at a barn for instruction on how to feed hogs.
In a recollection preserved in "The Way It Was Volume II," York described how he and the other boy waited for Finch until just before suppertime when the business manager showed up.
It was not unusual for Finch to be detained in the field, so to make sure the boys didn't miss a meal, the business manager showed the boys the best he knew how to feed the hogs.
The manager told the boys to return at the same time the next day to meet Finch and a similar scenario unfolded. After modeling the art of hog feeding to the boys, the business manager watched them as they performed the chore.
On the third day, York describes walking past the office of the business manager and being called inside for a consultation.
The man asked him what he knew about hogs. He told the man his family kept hogs and that he had worked for an uncle who kept as many as 600 head.
"He replied that he had observed the way I had done the feeding on the two occasions and had decided that I knew more about hogs than he, and that beginning immediately it would be my prime duty to care for the herd and to accept no assignment from any other person which might prevent my carrying out this duty in proper manner," York wrote.
York cared for the hogs for his first nine months on campus before being assigned other duties.
For the most part the campus boys were honorable young men but they were not beyond reproach.
The night watchman would sometimes quietly open locked doors for girls returning from late, unauthorized dates. He also had a key to the ice cream vault at Hardy Kitchen, something that made some people grateful to call him friend.
They weren't perfect but they learned to make 8-gallon quantities of mayonnaise and to become chauffeurs to the college president.
They worked hard physically and mentally to become educated in a place where they would never earn a degree. All campus boys were required to transfer after about three years to earn their degrees at Baylor University or some other college of their choice.
The campus boys never received diplomas. Their education was the kind written on the heart.
