LEGACY: The University of Florida's longest-serving president pushed forward a then - innovative concept: everyone needed a general education.
Imagine what might have been had history not got in the way of "Long John" Tigert.
The longest-sitting president of the University of Florida arrived in Gainesville in the late 1920s loaded with promise. John James Tigert IV took the job of president in 1928 after serving seven years as U.S. commissioner of education under the Harding and Coolidge administrations.
The 6-foot-3 Tennessean, whose father and grandfather were bishops in the Methodist Episcopal church, had been a sports hero at Vanderbilt, the university his grandfather founded after securing a million dollars from industrialist Cornelius Vanderbilt. As Tennessee's first Rhodes Scholar, Tigert earned a master of arts at Oxford University in England, where he was on the rowing, tennis, cricket and baseball teams.
At age 27 he took over the presidency of Kentucky Wesleyan College. Later he taught philosophy and psychology at the University of Kentucky.
In academic circles, by the time Tigert and his wife, Edith, arrived in Gainesville, he already had arrived.
"But the state of Florida was already beginning to experience a major recession as a result of the boom bust and the hurricanes of 1926 and '28," said Sam Proctor, professor emeritus of history at UF. "Dr. Tigert had to live through the depression decade and then that was followed by World War II.
"So whatever potential he hoped to realize, he was never able really to do it," he said. "The state Legislature was constantly cutting back. But notwithstanding that, there were some major accomplishments during Tigert's presidency."
In the mid-1930s the innovative Tigert established the general education program at UF. Modeled after a cutting-edge concept that came out of the University of Chicago in the late 1920s, UF's General College provided freshmen and sophomores a broader basic education than was the practice at the time.
"His concept was that everybody needed to be educated generally," Proctor said. "It was a real innovation as far as a Southern university was concerned."
Tigert helped create UF's first constitution, and decentralized administrative and budgeting functions. To help students better plan their college careers, he initiated a winter commencement in addition to the traditional June graduation.
While he shepherded UF through the Great Depression and war, the worldly Tigert remained a student's president until his UF service ended in 1947. The father of a daughter and son, he loved young people, and in those pre-coeducation days his students were called "Long John's Boys."
A star halfback at Vanderbilt, Tigert had been named to the All-Southern team by no less than football legends Grantland Rice and James Heisman, and athletics remained his passion. During his UF tenure he helped rewrite college football's rules, was instrumental in establishing the Southeastern Conference and built a 22,000-seat stadium at Florida Field - a budgetary miracle in 1930.
Off campus, Tigert stayed busy as a deacon at First Baptist Church, a Mason, Rotarian and, during the war, chairman of the Florida War Fund. He died in 1965, three weeks shy of his 83rd birthday and five years after UF's new administration building, Tigert Hall, was dedicated.
"I think his legacy," Proctor said, "was holding the university together during the perilous economic period of the 1930s and during the war years."