Alumni Association Presents Tanners With First Families Of Baylor Award

by Judy H. Prather

The Baylor University Alumni Association presented the First Families of Baylor Award to the Tanner family Sept. 24 during intermission of the Parents Weekend event, After Dark.
The award was presented by Baylor Alumni Association president Susie Grier Jaynes, and the family also was honored at a reception in the Hughes-Dillard Alumni Center following the performance. The annual First Families of Baylor Award, created in 1980, recognizes a multi-generational alumni family that has shown continuing interest in and support of Baylor.
Five generations and 34 members of the Tanner family have attended Baylor. First generation alumni include John Stephenson Tanner Jr., an 1890 Baylor graduate who earned a master's degree in 1892 and later taught Greek, Hebrew, Old and New Testament, and math at Baylor. According to the 1901 Baylor Bulletin, had it not been for Tanner's untimely death, he would have been chosen as Baylor's next president. His first wife, Lida Hinds Tanner, graduated from Baylor in 1892 and died four years later. His second wife and mother of his three children, Mary David Barton Tanner, earned a master's degree from Baylor in 1892.
Their son John S. Tanner was permanent president of the Class of 1922, an inductee in the Baylor Athletic Hall of Fame, and a member of the board of trustees of both Baylor University and Baylor College of Medicine. Twelve family members comprise the third generation of students, including John Tanner Hooker, a general contractor who built Marrs McLean Science Building, South Russell Hall and several other Baylor buildings.
Families who have previously received the First Families of Baylor Award include the Abner McCall family, the J.M. Dawson family, and the Samuel Palmer Brooks family.
For more information, contact Cheryl Allen, coordinator of membership and programs for the Baylor Alumni Association, at (254) 710-1121.