Edgar Godbold

Edgar S. Godbold (December 2, 1879 – November 21, 1952) was an American educator and clergyman. He was the fourth president of Southern Baptist-affiliated Louisiana College in Pineville, Louisiana, a position which he held from 1942 until his retirement in 1951.

Background

A native of Auburn in Lincoln County in southwestern Mississippi, Godbold was the oldest of six children of Thomas Rowan "Tom" Godbold and the former Mary S. "Mollie" Terry. The parents are interred in Amite County, Mississippi.

Godbold graduated from Auburn High School and in 1905 and 1910, respectively, received his bachelor's and master's degrees from Baptist-affiliated Mississippi College in Clinton. He was from 1905 to 1906 a principal in Lawrence County in southwestern Mississippi. From 1906 to 1907, he attended the University of Chicago, from which he received his doctorate. He was called to overseas duty in World War I from 1918 to 1919.

Baptist career

From 1906 to 1912, he was a biology professor at Mississippi College; then, he taught in his field at Louisiana College from 1913 to 1918.

From 1923 to 1929, Godbold was president of Baptist-affiliated Howard Payne College in Brownwood, Texas. After Howard Payne, Godbold was from 1929 to 1942 the executive secretary and then superintendent of the Missouri Baptist Convention, based in the state capital in Jefferson City, Missouri.

Godbold returned to Louisiana College as president in 1942,

Death and legacy

In 1909, then residing in Clinton, Mississippi, Godbold married the former Margaret Irene Coleman in Robinsonville, now known as Tunica Resorts, in northwestern Mississippi. She died in 1938 in Kansas City, Missouri. In 1940, at the age of sixty-one while still living in Missouri, Godbold remarried. His second wife, Lucy "Lucie" T. Sprecher (1893-1973), died at the age of eighty in a nursing home in Natchitoches, Louisiana. After Edgar's death, Lucie married a man named Roberts, who predeceased her.

After he left LC, Godbold remained president emeritus with fund-raising duties until his death in 1952. Edgar and Lucie Godbold are interred side by side at Forest Lawn Memorial Park near Pineville in Ball, Louisiana.