DR. GROVER CLEVELAND BOSWELL died Sept. 11, 1953 in
Austin, TX.
Personal Data:
Born: August 30, 1888 in Elkton, TN, the eldest
of four children
Parents: James Monroe and Frances Ann (Fannie) Puckett Boswell
Married: 1909 to Sallie Udora Parker (deceased 1913)
June 8, 1915 to Mary Anna Murrell
Children: James Monroe Boswell
Helen Andrews Boswell
Genevieve Murrell Boswell
Education:
Attended school in Tennessee before moving to a farm near
Barry, TX in 1901
Attended schools in Barry and Corsicana
Attended college at Southwest Texas State Teachers College in
San Marcos,
Trinity University, and Normal at Commerce (East Texas State Teachers
College) (B.A. & teaching certificate 1926)
Graduate studies at Southern Methodist University (1929), The
University of
Texas, and Simmons University (later Hardin Simmons University) (M.A.
in History, 1933)
Honorary LLD from Texas Wesleyan College 1939
Career:
Taught 2 - 3 years in rural schools in North Texas
Principal, Megargel High School, 1915 - 1916
Superintendent, Megargel Public Schools, 1916 - 1918
Superintendent, Ringgold Public Schools, 1918 - 1921
Superintendent, Byers Public Schools, 1921 - 1930
Superintendent, McLean Public Schools, 1930 - 1933
Dean, McMurry College 1933 - 1936
President, Weatherford Jr. College, 1936 - 1941
Field Representative and History professor, Texas Wesleyan College,
Fort Worth, 1941
Superintendent, Ranger Public Schools and President, Ranger
Jr. College,
1941 - 1951
President, Ranger Junior College, 1951-1953
Supervisor, Texas Veteran's Land Program, General Land Office, 1953
M.A. thesis - "History of the Barho Ranch of the Eastern Panhandle
of Texas",
August 1933
Articles:
"James Abercrombie Hyder, Dean of West Texas," West Texas Historical
Association Year Book, November 1935, pp. 38 - 46
"Fort Elliott's West Texas Historical Association Quarterly", May 1936
Educational Memberships:
Member, National Education Association
Longtime director, Texas Inter-Scholastic League
President, Texas Junior College Athletic Association, 1953
Member, Ancient and Benevolent Order of the Red Rose, an informal,
invitation-only, fraternal organization limited to educators
Life Member, Texas State Teachers Association
Member, Board of Directors, Texas Southern University, by appointment of
Governor Allan Shivers, October 16, 1951
Listed in Who's Who in America, Who's Who in the Southwest and
Who's Who in American Education
Organizations:
Member, West Texas Historical Association
Member and President, McLean Lions Club
Oddfellow
Member, Abilene Lions Club
Member and President, Weatherford Rotary Club
President, Weatherford Chamber of Commerce
Member, Knights of Pythias
32nd Degree Mason
Shriner
President, Ranger Rotary Club
District Governor, Rotary District 186, 1949 -1950
President, Ranger Chamber of Commerce
Chairman, Eastland County Chapter of the American Red Cross
Steward, Methodist Church for nearly 40 years
Delegate, General Conference of Methodist Episcopal Church, South,
Birmingham, Alabama, 1938
Delegate from Central Texas Annual Conference to Uniting Conference
of the Methodist Church, Kansas City, Missouri, 1939
Miscellaneous:
Had a reputation for rescuing schools in financial distress
At every school, emphasized and championed teacher pay raises
and adding new courses to curricula, including developing the
arts and sports and worked for accreditation.
by Joe B. Frantz:
Dr. Boswell's career covered an almost complete span of Texas
educational experiences from teaching in rural one-teacher
schools to teaching in the consolidated school, from teaching
in country schools which couldn't complete an 8-months' year
to sponsoring summer programs for public schools and colleges,
and from superintending schools whose teachers at the outset
were paid $60 a month to schools observing the Gilmer-Aiken
schedules.
His main contribution, however, lies in junior college work,
a field he entered after two decades in public school work and
three years a dean of a senior college. Regardless of which
field in which he labored, he made his greatest claim as a
builder of the local school, leaving each town with a stronger
school whose scholastic rating was higher, whose course offerings
were expanded, whose enrollment had increased, and whose finances
were sounder. He was an excellent doctor of sick school systems.
In Byers [1921], Dr. Boswell took over an unaccredited rural school,
and in nine years built a fully accredited grade and high school
system. High school upstairs, grade school down. It became a member
of the Southern Association of Schools and Colleges. A new school
building was completed in December 1929 and was still in use as
late as the early 1950s. [Dec. 15, 1929: "The high school building
has just been completed and Mr. Boswell is rounding out his ninth
year with the local schools. The high school is the only high
school in the county that has membership in the all-Southern list
of accredited secondary schools and colleges. There are seven
members in the high school faculty, with an enrollment of about
160 students and twenty-eight in the senior class." Dallas Morning
News]
In McLean, he took over a school system that had been wrecked
financially and was in danger of discontinuing because of its
financial tangle, and in the depth of the Depression worked the
school back to stability. In addition, the McLean system was in
danger of losing its accreditation, due in part to its financial
distress which led to teacher procurement difficulties, but Dr.
Boswell also straightened out this situation and left McLean once
again in full accreditation.
During his tenure as Dean, McMurry College was accepted into the
Southern Association of American Colleges, and the major share
of the credit for this development, according to McMurry President
J. W. Hunt (Abilene Reporter-News, January 1934), belonged to Dr.
Boswell, who was charged with trying to bring McMurry into the
Association. Dr. Boswell initiated the McMurry extension division.
At Weatherford College, where he made his advent into the junior
college field, Dr. Boswell took over a dispirited school that was
rapidly succumbing to Depression difficulties, and in five years
trebled its income, raised its enrollment from less than 100
students to more than 350, built a two-story brick library,
increased an almost non-existent loan fund to one totaling tens
of thousands, thereby enabling many a Depression-struck student
to gain two years of college, and all the while raised salaries
of his teaching staff.
His next job of resurrection was at Ranger, where a school system
built in opulent oil-boom days was in danger of dying because of
a declining town over-burdened with public debt. At a time when
most other city systems were tasting the economic upsurge at the
beginning of the 1940s, the Ranger system was still paying its
staff in heavily discounted scrip, and was apparently hopelessly
behind in its bills. When Dr. Boswell left Ranger thirteen years
later, junior college enrollment had increased from 56 to more
than 500, at the same time that Ranger's population continued to
dwindle. Where there had been no loan fund, a sizeable one now
existed. The junior college, whose sole plant had consisted of
the third floor of the high school building, now had ten separate,
debt-free buildings worth $400,000 and had been completely separated
from the grade- and high-school system by the simple process of
outgrowing it.
Dr. Boswell was known throughout his career as a teacher's super-
intendent or president, as he waged a consistent and successful
fight to raise salaries of his teachers and other employees. The
result was that a Boswell-run school system invariably paid higher
salaries than other Texas schools of similar size and financial
condition, with the result that he was able to extract a loyalty
from his employees that can be obtained only when subordinates
know their superior will fight their battle with all his heart
and energy. Because of his loyalty to his teachers, and their
devotion to him, he gave every town in which he worked a feeling
of pride and respect for its school system and the practitioners
within it that does not always exist between town and school.
Dr. Boswell also had a strong sense of public relations, and gave
unstintingly of his time to worthwhile civic causes, while seeing
that his teachers emulated his efforts to have the school and its
employees lead.
It is, of course, impossible to estimate the influence of Dr.
Boswell over the lives of his students. At the three colleges he
never turned away a student for financial reasons, but worked at
the student's problem until some way could be found for that student
to make his way through college. Literally hundreds of students
received from one to four years of college schooling, especially
during the Depression of the 1930s, because Dr. Boswell refused
to admit defeat in solving their bleak situations. Like a doctor
or a minister, he was on call twenty-four hours a day to counsel,
lend money, retrieve from trouble, and in general help students
get free from all the difficulties, actual and imaginary, into
which only students can get themselves.
Here then is no life lived on the grand educational pattern, with
facilities on every hand to give free play to working out imaginative
educational programs. Dr. Boswell represents the small system,
small college leader who fought eternally and courageously the
battle of "barely enough" that characterized so much of small-town
Texas education. He fought cheerfully, believing unswervingly
that the work of a school man is as important as any that can be
done on the earth, and fought to win, whatever the odds. That he
invariably won against handicaps that the big-system school man
knows nothing of is a tribute both to him and to the dozens of
small-system leaders of whom he is an outstanding representative.
Note: The information on Dr. Boswell was provided by the family.
Joe B. Frantz, who wrote the above biographic sketch was the
husband of Dr. Boswell's eldest daughter, Helen, who along with
Genevieve, were the children of his marriage to Mary Anna Murrell.
The late Dr. Frantz was very prominent in the history department
at UT-Austin for a number of years. Mary Anna Murrell Boswell died
in Austin in 1961. Monroe Boswell lives in Fort Worth and has a
son James Dan. Helen Frantz resides in Austin and has two daughters,
Jolie Fleming and Lisa Dietz. Genevieve Moss lives in Houston with
her husband, Thomas W. Moss, Jr., and they have two sons, Michael
and Marshall.
DAUGHTER: HELEN BOSWELL FRANTZ, a resident of Austin for over
70 years, died Oct. 21, 2012. She leaves behind a legacy of
love, laughter, & a lust for living.
Born Jan. 2, 1919 to Grover Cleveland (G.C.) Boswell & Mary Anna
Murrell Boswell, Helen's early life reads like a travelogue of
North and West Texas small towns. As her father was recruited
to establish and gain accreditation for new school districts,
Helen lived in Ringgold (her birthplace), Byers, Commerce, and
McLean. The family moved to Abilene where she completed her high
school years at Abilene High. In the years to come she would
often delight her young daughters with a high-pitched rendition
of the school's somber alma mater. Another move, this time to
Weatherford, saw Helen completing Weatherford Junior College.
She completed her undergraduate studies at Texas Wesleyan College
in Fort Worth. However, it was in Weatherford that Helen met and
married Joe B. Frantz in Sept. of 1939.
Together, they moved to Austin, where they both pursued graduate
study, with Helen researching the Little Theater Movement in Texas.
Although they always maintained a home in Austin and continued to be
associated with the University of Texas, professional opportunities
and World War II led Helen to continue exploring new environs.
During their first fifteen years of marriage, the couple lived in
Houston, Brooklyn, and Boston. For part of WWII, Helen taught public
school in Ranger, TX. In many ways her greatest success was not
as a classroom teacher; rather she was able to arrange social
services that met the needs of individual students.
Upon their return to Austin, Helen began joining several civic
groups. Possessed with strong organizational skills, she believed
in being an active participant, serving on the board of many.
She served as president of the Dill Elementary School PTA, the
University Ladies Club, the American History Club, and Open Forum,
where she was a frequent presenter. In 1984, she was asked to
write an entry about the American History Club for The Handbook
of Texas. She was also a former member of Faculty Wives, Retired
Faculty Staff Association, and the English-Speaking Union. In
1966 she joined Pan American Round Table, an organization whose
purpose is to promote the knowledge of neighboring countries.
She twice served as president of that organization and was chair-
person of its state convention when it was held in Austin in 1975.
Again, she was asked to supply an entry on this organization for
the Handbook. She remained committed to PART until her death.
Additionally, Helen was a member of the original group of Docents
of the LBJ Library, where she was recognized for twenty-five
years and over 3500 hours of service. She also was a docent at
the Texas Governor's Mansion beginning in 1983 when the program
started.
When forming the Austin Arts Commission, Mayor Carole McClellan
appointed her as a member in the area of Dance. She served four
terms, ending in 1986, and was honored with the Amicus Award for
"outstanding support of the Arts in Austin" in 1984. Helen also
logged volunteer hours with Reading Is Fundamental, Meals on
Wheels, and with the Texas State Historical Association during
its annual conventions. The granddaughter of a Methodist minister,
Helen joined the University United Methodist Church when she first
moved to Austin. She enjoyed belonging to several UMW circles and
was a member of the Couples Plus class.
Helen loved to travel and was able to visit most of the continents.
Her first visit to Mexico sparked a life-long interest in Central
and South America. She enjoyed living for extended periods in
Chile, Peru, and Ecuador. However, when asked in recent years
where she would most like to return, she promptly answered, "The
Greek Isles."
Helen is survived by her two daughters, Jolie Fleming and her
husband, Scott, of Falls Church, VA, and Lisa Dietz & her husband,
Henry, of Austin; five grandchildren: Stephen, Genevieve, and Nick
Fleming, and Richard and Rachel Dietz; her sister, Genevieve Boswell
Moss; and many nieces and nephews. They will miss her quick wit,
her family stories, and the joy of being with her.
DAUGHTER: GENEVIEVE BOSWELL MOSS passed away peacefully on
March 3, 2020, with burial at Forest Park Westheimer Cemetery
in Houston, TX.
She was born is Byers, TX on Feb. 20, 1924 to the parents Grover
Cleveland (G.C.) Boswell & Mary Anna Murrell Boswell. She grew
up in Weatherford, TX along with her sister, Helen Boswell Frantz.
She earned her Teaching Degree from the University of Texas at
Austin. While attending school, Genevieve met Thomas Whitfield
Moss, Jr. and they were married in Austin. Soon after, they
moved to Houston with their two sons, Michael Boswell Moss and
Thomas Marshall Moss. Genevieve was not only a devoted mother
and loving wife, but spent time helping her husband at Moss &
Co CPA’s assisting him with various duties. She was also a long-
time member of the First United Methodist Church. She worshiped
in the Adelphi class in which her husband taught for 20 years.
She also devoted time to the Blue Bird Circle Resale shop that
is a non-profit organization of women that assists supporting
care of neurological disorders in children. Tom and Genevieve
also contributed to the church a gift, known as the “Great Minds
of Methodism”. It brought guest speakers to speak to the
congregation about their life dealings of Christianity. She &
her late husband also contributed scholarships to colleges such
as Baylor University and TCU. Together they were also members
of the 200 Horns club at the University of Texas, The Houston
Club and the Petroleum Club. She will be remembered by her grace
and positive outlook on life.