Do What
We Can
The school was fragile. The future was uncertain. Dr. Walter Grubb learned that leadership sometimes meant taking the next faithful step and trusting the Lord with the rest.
A school at
a crossroads.
In Session II of A Venture of Faith, Volume II, Dr. Walter Grubb remembers the difficult years that shaped the modern academy. Financial pressure, leadership change, denominational tension, athletic sanctions, and an uncertain future forced the school to decide what kind of institution it would become.
The story continues
By the time Dr. Walter Grubb arrived in 1987, Harrison Chilhowee Baptist Academy had already lived through more than most schools could bear.
Four moments changed the course of the academy.
Harrison Chilhowee celebrates 100 years and launches the Century Two campaign for its future.
President Hubert Smothers dies in a fire on campus, leaving the academy shaken.
Tennessee Baptists reduce the academy’s funding by 35 percent in the middle of the school year.
After another leadership transition, Dr. Grubb accepts the presidency in June.
The second century began with celebration. Then everything changed.
Harrison Chilhowee Baptist Academy celebrated its first 100 years in 1980.
The centennial should have felt like a launching point. The school had survived wars, economic hardship, cultural change, and generations of transition. Reaching a century of continuous service was remarkable.
School leaders launched the Century Two campaign, an effort intended to strengthen facilities and prepare the academy for the years ahead.
There was considerable activity. Materials were prepared. Multimedia equipment was purchased. Presentations were carried to churches across Tennessee.
But Dr. Grubb remembers that financially, the campaign never accomplished what leaders had hoped.
Still, the milestone mattered.
One hundred years of students. One hundred years of teachers. One hundred years of dormitories, classrooms, chapel services, meals, prayers, difficult seasons, and answered prayers.
Then came tragedy.
That just rocked the academy.
Dr. Walter Grubb
Hubert Smothers had served as president since 1972. He was widely known, deeply loved, and had helped develop programs that expanded the reach of the academy.
On New Year’s Eve 1984, Smothers died in a fire in the president’s home on campus.
The loss was more than an entry in the school’s history. It touched hallways, offices, classrooms, students, employees, alumni, and trustees.
Board chair Jane Shubert Ellison stepped forward to provide stability while trustees searched for the school’s next president.
They eventually turned to Dr. William Palmer.
Dr. Palmer needed help. So he made a phone call to California.
The academy depended on a relationship that was becoming increasingly difficult.
When Dr. Palmer became president, he brought deep relationships within Tennessee Baptist life. He had pastored First Baptist Church of Morristown, served as president of the Tennessee Baptist Convention, and was respected across the state.
Dr. Grubb remembers him as extraordinarily intelligent. Palmer preached regularly in chapel and in churches the two men visited together.
What stood out was his command of Scripture. Dr. Grubb remembers Palmer preaching biblical texts from memory rather than reading them from the pulpit.
Palmer focused much of his presidency on relationships, public relations, donors, and the Tennessee Baptist Convention.
But Harrison Chilhowee was a complicated institution. There were academics, boarding students, international students, athletics, facilities, finances, churches, alumni, and the daily realities of a small Christian school.
By the summer of 1987, Palmer knew he needed a principal.
That need brought Walter Grubb back to Tennessee.
What Dr. Grubb stepped into cannot be understood without the academy’s relationship with the Tennessee Baptist Convention.
Harrison Chilhowee had been part of the convention family since 1932. Tennessee Baptists elected the academy’s trustees, and Cooperative Program funding provided substantial financial support.
In 1987, the convention related to four educational institutions: Union University, Carson-Newman College, Belmont College, and Harrison Chilhowee Baptist Academy.
“We were the little kid on the block.”
Dr. Walter GrubbThe difference was significant.
The other institutions were colleges. Harrison Chilhowee was a boarding and day school serving secondary students.
It was also struggling.
Enrollment remained low. Dr. Grubb remembers one year opening school with only 79 students on the first day.
At the same time, the academy was receiving several hundred thousand dollars each year through the Cooperative Program.
Convention leaders wanted to see growth. Dr. Grubb understood why.
The concern was legitimate. But soon the pressure would become much more serious.
In November 1992, the financial pressure became a crisis.
By 1992, Dr. Palmer was preparing for retirement. The relationship between Harrison Chilhowee and portions of the Tennessee Baptist Convention had become increasingly strained.
Some leaders, particularly in Middle and West Tennessee, questioned how much convention support the academy was receiving relative to the number of students it served.
Then came the annual convention meeting in Gatlinburg.
A motion was introduced to reduce the academy’s Cooperative Program funding by 35 percent.
The timing was especially difficult.
This was November, not the beginning of a new budget year. The reduction would take effect immediately, in the middle of the school year.
Effective immediately.
The motion passed.
The academy left the meeting facing a significant financial crisis and serious questions about its future.
Dr. Palmer recommended bringing in outside consultants to help the board determine what should happen next.
The consulting team was led by Dr. Bruce Lockerbie and connected with The Stony Brook School in New York.
Their recommendations would alter the identity of the school.
The consultants believed the Harrison Chilhowee Baptist Academy name was cumbersome and communicated a denominational identity that made the school more difficult to introduce to families outside Baptist circles.
They proposed a new name: The King’s Academy of Greater Knoxville.
The legal corporation would remain Harrison Chilhowee Baptist Academy, but the school began doing business as The King’s Academy.
The consultants also recommended a new president.
Mike Bean of Dallas was selected and took office in January 1993.
Dr. Grubb remained principal.
The transition did not bring the stability everyone hoped for.
Suddenly, the school was in transition again.
Dr. Grubb had planned to leave. Instead, the board asked him to lead.
The relationship with Tennessee Baptist leadership continued to deteriorate through 1993 and into 1994.
In January, Dr. Grubb submitted his resignation, effective at the end of the school year.
He expected to move on.
Then, in March 1994, Mike Bean and the Board of Trustees agreed to part ways.
Once again, the academy found itself without a president.
The board asked Dr. Grubb to step into the role on an interim basis.
He agreed.
It was a bit of a hornet’s nest.
Dr. Walter Grubb
One of the first major problems waiting for him involved athletics.
The academy had been penalized by the Tennessee Secondary School Athletic Association after being found to have played ineligible athletes.
The consequences were severe.
Football lost postseason eligibility. Basketball was affected as well.
The timing was painful because the school had assembled an unusually talented group of basketball players, including three students from Wales who had previously played together.
Todd Stone was a powerful 6-foot-5 player. Lee Walker became, in Dr. Grubb’s memory, one of the finest high school basketball players he had seen. Stuart Robbins stood around 6-foot-10.
They could play.
But because of the sanctions, there would be no postseason run.
Repair the relationship.
With legal support, Dr. Grubb prepared an extensive appeal to the TSSAA Board of Control.
Around the first of May 1994, he presented the school’s case.
The academy was partially reinstated.
Penalties and conditions remained, but the relationship could begin to heal.
About a month later, the Board of Trustees came to Dr. Grubb with another question.
Would he consider becoming president permanently?
Dr. Walter Grubb becomes president.
He did not know how to fix everything. He knew he was supposed to stay.
Dr. Grubb prayed about the board’s invitation.
Then he said yes.
In June 1994, he officially became president of The King’s Academy.
Looking back, he does not romanticize the season.
The school had lost Hubert Smothers. It had depended on Dr. Palmer’s steady leadership. Enrollment had declined. Finances were fragile. Convention funding had been cut.
The school had changed its name, endured a short presidential tenure, experienced serious athletic penalties, and entered another leadership transition.
Even the academy’s relationship with the Tennessee Baptist Convention remained uncertain.
At one meeting, Dr. Grubb asked the chair of the convention’s Education Committee whether the school could do anything differently to improve the relationship.
The answer stunned him.
Well, actually, I see no purpose for Christian schools.
A Tennessee Baptist education leader, as recalled by Dr. Grubb
The comment made the challenge unmistakable.
The road ahead would not be easy.
Enrollment remained low. Finances were vulnerable. Leadership turnover had taken a toll. Important relationships needed repair.
Dr. Grubb did not claim to have a comprehensive solution for everything in front of him.
What he had was conviction.
He believed the Holy Spirit had made the next step clear.
“I’m here. Let’s play. Let’s do what we can and trust the Lord for the rest.”Dr. Walter Grubb
There were plans, meetings, appeals, board decisions, financial conversations, and leadership changes. All of them mattered.
But underneath them was something deeper.
The school did not need leaders who could see every step of the road ahead.
It needed people willing to faithfully take the next one.
The future was anything but certain.
But the next step was clear enough.
Do what we can. Trust the Lord.