The Call
Back Home
Before Dr. Walter Grubb ever served at The King’s Academy, the story had already reached into his family.
Hear the story
in his own words.
In Session I of A Venture of Faith, Volume II, Dr. Walter Grubb reflects on his family’s early connection to Harrison Chilhowee Baptist Academy, the years that prepared him for Christian education, and the unmistakable call that brought him back to East Tennessee in 1987.
The story behind the conversation
Years before Dr. Walter Grubb stepped into leadership, before his move from California, before the difficult first year, and before The King’s Academy carried the name it does today, there was Harrison Chilhowee Baptist Academy. For the Grubb family, that school was already personal.
Four moments that shaped the story.
His family’s connection to Harrison Chilhowee would soon become part of his earliest memories.
After returning to high school as an adult, Walter’s father completes his diploma at the academy.
Walter and his wife consider serving at Harrison Chilhowee, but the timing does not yet feel right.
Dr. William Palmer calls California and invites Dr. Grubb to consider returning to Tennessee.
The school was part of his story long before he worked here.
Dr. Grubb was born in 1951. His father had left school in the tenth grade and built a successful career in the automobile business. Then his life changed. He came to faith in Christ and sensed a call to preach the gospel.
People around him encouraged him to prepare for that calling by completing the education he had left unfinished. So, as an adult with a family of his own, he returned to high school.
The school he chose was Harrison Chilhowee Baptist Academy.
I saw my father graduate from high school.
Dr. Walter Grubb
His father sat in classrooms beside teenagers while raising children at home. It was unusual by modern standards, but he was not alone.
During that era, Harrison Chilhowee served a number of adults preparing for ministry who had never completed high school. They were sometimes known as “preacher boys.” Some were married. Some had children. They came because a high school diploma mattered and because they believed serious preparation for ministry mattered too.
Dr. Grubb watched that commitment firsthand.
His father graduated from Harrison Chilhowee in 1958, later attended Carson-Newman, and eventually moved the family to California to study at Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary.
He pastored churches, traveled long distances for school, and continued learning while providing for a growing family.
For his son, that example established something lasting. Education was worth pursuing. Calling required obedience. Preparation mattered.
That was Walter Grubb’s first connection to the academy.
Then, for many years, the school moved quietly into the background of his life.
There would be one early opportunity to come back. It just was not time yet.
A career he had never planned began preparing him for a place he had never expected.
In 1974, Dr. Grubb and his wife moved from California to Tennessee while he pursued graduate study at the University of Tennessee.
A family connection introduced them to Hubert Smothers, then president of Harrison Chilhowee Baptist Academy.
Smothers discussed the possibility of the newly married couple serving as dorm directors in the boys dormitory. They considered it, but decided the role was not right for them.
The answer was no, but the meeting stayed with Dr. Grubb. Smothers was dynamic and engaging. Walter left thinking that, under different circumstances, he would enjoy working for him.
The Grubbs eventually returned to California.
By then, California was deeply woven into Walter’s life. He had attended California Baptist College, now California Baptist University, and had met his wife there. His professional path also began taking shape there.
Education, however, had not been his original plan.
He studied political science and once imagined pursuing government work. After college, an opportunity arose to teach at a small private Christian school in Riverside.
He stepped into classrooms teaching subjects that included history, math, and art.
“I realized, oh my goodness, this is where I’m supposed to be.”
Dr. Walter GrubbThat realization redirected his professional life.
He pursued graduate work in education, became certified as a teacher, and later as an administrator.
He served as a principal, worked at California Baptist College in admissions and student life, and later spent several years working in an intensive special education program in Riverside.
Leadership responsibilities increasingly pulled him toward administration, even though he never lost his affection for the classroom itself.
Looking back, those years had been preparation.
Then, in the summer of 1987, the telephone rang.
One conversation changed the direction of his life.
Dr. William Palmer was serving as president of the academy. He needed a principal.
Dr. Grubb’s father had graduated from the school and, by that point, had also served on its Board of Trustees. When Palmer began looking for someone to fill the role, Walter Grubb’s name entered the conversation.
Palmer called him in California.
His phone call changed my life.
Dr. Walter Grubb
Dr. Palmer invited him to Tennessee for an interview. Walter discussed the opportunity with his wife.
The possibility represented a major change. California was her home. Their son was eight years old, another child was on the way, and a move across the country would alter nearly every part of their family life.
Still, she was open to it.
Dr. Grubb flew east, stayed with his parents in Maryville, and drove to campus for a Sunday afternoon interview.
During that meeting, Palmer offered him the position.
Dr. Grubb accepted.
The magnitude of the decision settled over him during the drive back toward Maryville. Emotion overwhelmed him enough that he pulled the car to the side of the road and sat there.
Years later, he still described that moment as one of the clearest experiences of God’s leadership he had ever known. This was not simply an attractive job opportunity. He believed the Holy Spirit was directing him.
The calling was clear. The assignment was not easy.
When Dr. Grubb arrived at Harrison Chilhowee, he was not walking into a polished institution with easy answers.
He saw an old campus and aging buildings. He saw a relatively small student body. He saw a school with a remarkable history, significant needs, and a future that was anything but guaranteed.
But he also saw possibility.
The academy occupied a beautiful 65-acre campus in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains. It had already served students for more than a century. Young people were coming from around the world to study there.
History was everywhere. So was the work that needed to be done.
“Buckle your seat belt.
This is going to be a ride.”
It was.
Dr. Grubb remembers that first year as much harder than he expected.
The school was serving roughly 100 students in grades eight through twelve. The large campus required attention. Buildings needed work. Faculty development mattered.
The financial picture remained difficult, even though support from the Tennessee Baptist Convention provided a substantial portion of the school’s budget at the time.
There was also a cultural adjustment.
Southern California and East Tennessee did not move at the same pace. Neither did educational institutions. Neither did Baptist institutions. At Harrison Chilhowee, all three realities met.
Dr. Grubb brought ideas and a desire to improve the school, but trust could not be demanded.
Some faculty members were understandably cautious about a new principal arriving from California. He had to demonstrate that he was not there simply to impose change.
He wanted to support teachers in their classrooms and coaches in their programs.
They needed time to trust him. He needed time to learn to trust them.
There were personnel decisions he might have made more quickly in another season of life. Instead, he felt restrained from forcing some of those changes.
Over time, people moved on naturally, new people arrived, and the school began finding stronger fits for the work ahead.
There were moments when returning to California would have been easier. But the conviction from that Sunday interview had never left him.
The work was difficult. The people made it worth staying.
Dr. Grubb admits there were times when he wondered why he had moved his family across the country. There were even moments when he wanted to quit and return to California.
What held him steady was the certainty he had felt on the day of his interview.
He believed he was supposed to be here.
Then there were the people.
He encountered teachers whom he would later describe among the finest he had ever known.
He saw trustees give sacrificially, pray faithfully, and remain deeply committed to the institution when walking away would have been easier.
Slowly, the people of Harrison Chilhowee won him over.
Then came his first East Tennessee fall.
After years in Southern California, the color across the campus seemed almost impossible. The trees, mountains, and grounds were transformed.
He mentioned the beauty of it to his father.
Son, it’s like that every fall here.
Dr. Grubb’s father
It was a simple observation, but it reminded him where he was.
This was more than an aging school with financial concerns.
More than old buildings and a complicated institutional history.
More than a difficult leadership assignment.
This was a place generations had prayed for, sacrificed for, learned in, taught in, and called home.
He could not yet see what the years ahead would bring.
But he knew one thing.
He was exactly where God had called him to be.