George W. Bond

George William Bond (April 6, 1891 – May 14, 1974), an Arkansas native, was president in the first half of the 20th century of two public universities in Louisiana -- Louisiana Tech in Ruston and Southeastern in Hammond.

Background

Bond was born in Summers in Washington County in northeastern Arkansas,^[1] to William Elijah Bond (1864-1953) and the former Martha Irene Simpson (1866-1940). He graduated from Cincinnati High School in Cincinnati in Washington County near Fayetteville, Arkansas. Bond served in the United States Army during World War I and attended the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville and University of Chicago, from which he obtained a master's degree in 1923.

Academic career

Bond taught in Springdale and Cane Hill, also in Washington County, before he became a superintendent in Bauxite in Saline County in central Arkansas,^[2] and a principal in Texarkana.^[3] He then relocated to Ruston in 1924 to become an education professor at Louisiana Tech.^[2] He served as Tech's eighth president from 1928 to 1936.^[4] While Tech president, he continued to work on his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago but resigned from Louisiana Tech before completing his terminal degree.^[2]

Just two weeks before he left the Tech presidency, Bond broke the ground for the new $421,000 administration building, known first as Leche Hall after Governor Richard Leche and then renamed for John Ephraim Keeny, the sixth president of Louisiana Tech.^[5]The Minden Herald in Minden, Louisiana, reported that Bond left Ruston to enroll in the doctoral program at Columbia University in New York City.^[6] From 1944 to 1945, Bond was the acting fourth president^[7] at Southeastern in Hammond.^[8]

Later years

In their later years, Bond and his wife, the former Mary Elizabeth Bost (1898-1997), a teacher of Latin and like her husband a native of Summers, Arkansas,^[9] lived in Searcy and Fayetteville, Arkansas, where they engaged in gardening, travel, and entertaining. They were Presbyterian. He was a member of the Masonic lodge. The Bonds died, twenty-three years apart, in Fayetteville and are interred there at Fairview Memorial Gardens.^[4]

References