NEARLY 105 YEARS AT UMHB
Bernia Tyson (President Tyson’s oldest sister) started the longstanding family relationship with Mary Hardin-Baylor in 1920 when the university was Baylor Female College. As a first-year student, Bernia lived at Luther Hall for two years (nine years before it burned to the ground in an early-morning fire in 1929). She studied here for two years, left for two years to teach school (which one could do in those days without a degree) and later returned to finish earning her bachelor’s degree in 1926. Next came Bernia’s younger brother, Thomas Luther Tyson, who served as a trustee of Mary Hardin-Baylor College from 1938 to 1949 when he died unexpectedly. Then, Morris’ mother, Arla Irene Ray, attended the school for a year in 1939 before leaving to join her younger sister the following year at Baylor University. In 1947, Bernia’s daughter, Bernia Marie Miles, followed in her mother’s footsteps as a student at UMHB and graduated in 1951. Shortly after, the elder Bernia returned to Mary Hardin-Baylor to work on the staff and then faculty, teaching elementary education and retiring in 1968. During her time here, the school hired President Tyson in 1954. When he stepped in as president, the college was in a financial crisis. With only around 200 students, he began working to put measures in place to save the university—increasing enrollment, raising enough money to make payroll and lining up financial aid. One of the first things he did was find the money to pay some professors who had worked for a few months without being paid. He also built Luther Memorial and added the Goodman Gymnasium and Townsend Library.
“In the 12 years dad was there, he made a lot of improvements,” said Morris, who also attended UMHB as a student from 1960 to 1962. Since UMHB didn’t turn co-educational until 1971, Morris left to attend Howard Payne University in his junior year and then Baylor University in his senior year to finish his degree in business in 1964. Morris worked for two years in the insurance business before the U.S. Army drafted him and sent him to the Vietnam War, where he fought in Vietnam and Cambodia. Like many soldiers serving in Vietnam, Morris was exposed to Agent Orange during his six years of service there. In 2022, when the U.S. Congress passed the PACT Act, which expanded VA healthcare benefits to veterans exposed to toxic substances, Morris sent in his paperwork to apply for disability benefits from exposure to Agent Orange.
He waited for months to hear back from the government, and during that time, he experienced a life-threatening health condition that he wasn’t sure he would survive. While in the hospital, Morris prayed.
“I made a deal with the Lord that if I got this money, I was going to give it away,” he said.
When God answered his prayer, and he returned home, he soon received his first disability check and called UMHB President Dr. Randy O’Rear and said he wanted to place the money in his family’s two presidential endowed scholarships, in the names of Dr. and Mrs. Arthur K. Tyson and Bernia Tyson Miles.
“Christian education is so important,” Morris said. “I am so proud of these two scholarships in memory of my family and am happy to contribute to them.”
Morris has fond memories of growing up on the UMHB campus where he moved with his family as a seventh-grader attending Belton Junior High. Morris recalls witnessing his father’s love and dedication to the university many times. He has many memories of his father giving money to help students, many of whom came from meager means, with their tuition and fees.
“Every time he would come home from a speaking engagement or preaching at a church or a club and get money from that, he would turn it into the business office with a note to apply it to a particular student’s tuition or fees or whatever they needed,” he said.
After Morris returned from the Vietnam War, he enjoyed an exciting career investing in car dealerships throughout the Southwest and later buying and selling collector cars. He has two children, Morris “Mo” Tyson II and Melodee Tyson, and lives in Georgetown with his son and daughter-in-law, who both recently retired after 30 years with the U.S. Army.
Morris says he is proud of the 104-year relationship with UMHB and that his father played a role in its success today. Even though his father’s name is memorialized on an Independence Village residence hall, Morris knows the money his father gave to help students and the donations he is making now will have an even greater impact—an eternal impact in advancing God’s kingdom—and that is the best reason to give, he says.
“It’s wonderful! I wish I could have done it sooner!”
