As part of his response to receiving the T. B. Maston Christian Ethics Award, on November 4, 1993, Dr. A. Jase Jones gave the following account/history of the founding of the T. B. Maston Foundation. To read the rest of his remarks, click here.
I want to give here an account of some of the important events in the life of the Maston Foundation. The Foundation’s beginning can be traced to a night just before Christmas of 1975, when Vivian and I stopped for a short visit with Dr. and Mrs. Maston and Tom Mc. On that occasion, I asked Dr. Maston if anyone was writing the story of his life and work, and he replied that he had given permission to Bill Pinson to do that. He went on to say that a major difficulty in getting such books published was that they were not commercially profitable and must be subsidized. I told him that I felt sure that I could obtain the money and asked if he would mind my discussing the book with Dr. Pinson. With his permission, I was soon in contact with Bill, and it was agreed that he would begin working on the book and arranging with Broadman Press for its publication, and that I would proceed to arrange for the money.
We are indebted solely to Dr. Pinson for drawing up the structure of the book (to be entitled An Approach to Christian Ethics: The Life, Contribution and Thought of T. B. Maston), enlisting the services of 23 people to write its chapters, and working out the publication arrangements with Broadman Press. The book was completed in 1978 and the manuscript placed in Broadman’s hands. We (Pinson and I) committed ourselves to being responsible to provide Broadman Press with the sum of $7,000.00 to help defray the costs of the book, and Broadman, in turn, agreed to give us 4,000 copies of the book.
Mr. Frank Head, a Houston businessman and my brother-in-law, loaned us $7,500.00 ($500 went to Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary to pay for secretarial services needed in connection with the book’s production) through one of his banks, Nixon State Bank of Nixon, Texas. Only because the law required it, he suggested that five people sign the note. The signatories were Browning Ware, Jimmy Allen, Raymond Hankamer, Jase Jones, Bill Pinson, and Orba Lee Malone. Far more than enough money to pay off the loan soon came in to enable us to pay off the note before its due date, and, as well, to pay off a sizeable amount of miscellaneous “start-up” costs. We have gone on from there to build up an investment corpus of approximately $200,000.00, and to pay out many thousands of dollars in student scholarships and in sabbatical supplements to professors of Christian Ethics at Southwestern and New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminaries.
In February, 1979, four people – Bill Pinson, Jimmy Allen, James Dunn, and Jase Jones – met for breakfast in the home of President and Mrs. Pinson of Golden Gate Baptist Seminary to make plans for the future of the Maston Fund. Two decisions came out of this meeting. One was to have a luncheon honoring Dr. and Mrs. Maston in Houston’s Shamrock Hotel in conjunction with the 1979 meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention. The second decision was to launch an effort to obtain contributions to the
T. B. Maston Scholarship Fund (later to be called T. B. Maston Scholarship Foundation) from Southwestern Seminary alumni, the earnings from which would be used to provide scholarships for students majoring in Christian ethics. The first public announcement of this effort was made at the Shamrock luncheon.
It is important for me to say here that everything done for and on behalf of the Maston Fund/Foundation was solely at the initiative of former students of Dr. Maston. Although Dr. Maston was keenly interested in the Fund and always with pleasure and gratitude received information from us about the Fund, he never made suggestions as to what should be done or pried into the Fund’s affairs. He was content to leave such matters in the hands of his “boys.”
Following the Shamrock luncheon, Bob Adams, Keith Wills, and I met upstairs in the bedroom of Dr. and Mrs. Maston’s suite at the hotel and planned the initial fund-raising effort. The first step was to secure permission from Southwestern Seminary to use the seminary as our initial base of operations. I later met with Wayne Evans, John Earl Seelig, and Southwestern’s comptroller. They readily gave permission for us to ask donors to the Fund to send their donations to the seminary, which deposited the gifts in a special Maston Fund account at the seminary.
A development committee was soon formed. This committee led the work of the Maston Fund until the Maston Foundation was established in 1986 and trustees were named.
The first Fund solicitation was mailed shortly thereafter (1979) to all seminary graduates through the 1963 class, the last year Dr. Maston taught at Southwestern. The response from former students all across the country was immediate and gratifying.
A principal goal, the establishment of a T. B. Maston Chair of Christian Ethics at Southwestern Seminary, is yet unreached. An effort was made but was not successful. In a meeting I had with President Dilday, Lloyd Elder, and John Earl Seelig, ready approval of such a project was expressed, but the donor who was approached decided not to contribute to the establishment of such a chair.
A charter was secured from the State of Texas in 1986 in the name of the T. B. Maston Scholarship Foundation, and it became a not-for-profit corporation. This transition was accomplished with the skillful guidance of Attorney Hal Haralson, one of our own trustees and a former student of Dr. Maston and graduate of Southwestern Seminary.