Ferrum, VA, October 5, 2025 — Memories of many generations at Ferrum College are woven into “Faith of Our Fathers,” an original production celebrating the centenary of Schoolfield Hall, one of the historic campus buildings. It will be presented as a concert performance with historical narration and dramatization by the Blue Ridge Dinner Theatre during Homecoming Weekend, on Sunday, October 12, at 11 a.m. in Sale Theatre. Admission is free and reservations are recommended but not required.
“Faith of Our Fathers,” the last script written by Professor Emeritus Rex Stephenson, was unfinished when he died on August 13, 2025. Student Ahna Tyree was his research assistant, aided by Professor of English Tina Hanlon, Theatre Intern TJ Baker, and Assistant Director of Library Services and Archives Danny Adams. The production is directed by Assistant Professor Emily Blankenship-Tucker, program coordinator for Music and Theatre, who completed the script.
Tours of Schoolfield Hall and its archival displays will also be offered during Homecoming Weekend, on Saturday, October 11 between 11:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m., and Sunday, October 12 between 12 p.m. and 1:30 p.m. Visitors will be able to peek behind the scenes at the Blue Ridge Dinner Theatre, learn a bit of Ferrum College trivia, and perhaps hear a ghost story or two. Click here for free tour registration.
The Music and Theatre program describes “Faith of Our Fathers” as “a century in song…uplifting and fun,” with vintage popular songs and hymns, such as “Faith of Our Fathers” and “The Church’s One Foundation,” performed by musicians from the Jack Tale Players, Orchestra Appalachia, the faculty and staff, current students, and veterans of the Blue Ridge Dinner Theatre. “Audiences can expect to enjoy great musical performances and learn more about Ferrum College history from where we started to where we are now,” said Blankenship-Tucker. Alumni Kristina Stump ’97, Assistant Professor of Theatre Arts Rebecca Crocker ’02, and Gage Shelton ’25 are among the ensemble cast, with TJ Baker ’24 as the narrator.
Schoolfield Memorial Hall, dedicated in 1925, was originally the campus chapel for Ferrum Training School. With a donation from R. A. Schoolfield, a Danville industrialist, and fundraising by President Benjamin Beckham and the Woman’s Missionary Society of the Virginia Methodist Conference, the new building provided worship and concert space for all the students, since St. James Methodist Church in the village of Ferrum was too small for all of them to attend church there at once.
As the school grew into Ferrum Junior College, Schoolfield Hall also held a gymnasium in the lower level with a basketball court and a recreation area with a stage, a movie projection room, and a pool hall, as well as a library for a period of time. It is one of eight buildings in the Ferrum Historic District that were constructed between 1914 and 1942, listed since 2013 on the National Register of Historic Places and the Virginia Landmarks Register.
In A History of Ferrum College (1977), Frank Benjamin Hurt observed that Schoolfield Hall “became the most beautiful structure on the campus,” with “a seating capacity for more than five hundred persons” (p. 55). Over the years many groups and individuals have chosen its front steps for their milestone photographs, including the graduating class of 2025 and the earlier one shown in Hurt’s book, in the photographs below.
Hanlon remembers a summer day about fifteen years ago when she saw an older couple on the patio next to Schoolfield Hall looking toward the roof of the building for a long time. After greeting them, she learned that the man was a brick mason from Martinsville who had never been to this campus before, but he wanted to see the brick work that his father did during construction of the building. “I’m sorry I didn’t get their names,” said Hanlon, “but I took them inside to see how the building is used as a theatre, told them they were welcome here any time, grabbed Rex Stephenson to meet them right before he left for a Jack Tale show, because I knew their historical knowledge of the building where he had worked so long and hard would interest him, and I took them to the president’s office, where they were given a copy of the college history book.”
Dr. William Wray ’61, from Callaway, Virginia, spoke to several College staff members in October about how much he loves his memories of his student days and the many activities he has attended on campus since then. Praising his religion and music professors and librarian, he remembers taking a religion course in Schoolfield Hall and playing the big organ in the chapel (which did not survive because of a fire).
The choir loft photo is from the 1938 yearbook. Dr. Wray recognized pictures of the bulky old pulpit that has played a role on stage in so many productions, including “Faith of Our Fathers.” He said the Reverend C. P. Minnick, who taught religion, had an office where the theatre lighting booth is now. He also described a dance held below the chapel, but says he studied in the library during the dance.
Dr. Wray owns a mahogany and tapestry antique chair from the vestibule of the chapel that he happened to find at a sale in Charlottesville for only $25. After he described some of the furnishings that he cleaned and polished, Blankenship-Tucker added him into the script as a student telling the president how he earned his way through school by cleaning and then playing the organ. When an unnamed student in an earlier decade says that his teachers “are the wisest people I have ever known,” that is another snippet from Blankenship-Tucker’s talk with Dr. Wray.
“Faith of Our Father” is a one-act play that briefly brings the history of Schoolfield Hall up to date from the building of Vaughn Chapel in the late 1960s to the general renovation led by Stephenson and the College in the early 1980s to create “a state-of-the-art theatre.” It houses offices and teaching spaces for theatre arts, with a flexible theatre downstairs and Sale Theatre upstairs. Stephenson even built a performance space based on Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in the area that now holds a workshop and storage for tools and costumes.
The “flex” was renovated and dedicated as The Rex Stephenson Theatre in April 2023, with murals and displays about the theatre companies and drama programs created by Stephenson since he began teaching at Ferrum College in 1973. He founded the Jack Tale Players in 1975 and the Blue Ridge Dinner Theatre (BRDT) in 1979.
Professor Emeritus Wayne Bowman taught classes and directed plays in Schoolfield Hall during his many years on the theatre faculty, and Professor Emerita Jody Brown served as Executive Director of the Blue Ridge Dinner Theatre for several decades until the summer theatre series ended in 2012. She still performs with the Jack Tale Players and in the cast of “Faith of Our Fathers.” Professor Emeritus of History Mike Trochim performed many BRDT roles, ranging from the Tin Man in “The Wizard of Oz” and a jailbird in a musical revue about Elvis, to God in a Noah play and John Wesley in historical plays he co-wrote with Stephenson. The two of them played the mismatched, recently-divorced roommates Oscar and Felix in Stephenson’s favorite play, The Odd Couple.
Blankenship-Tucker was a student intern from another college when she first came to Ferrum in 2001, like many other summer BRDT performers for three decades. Countless other faculty, staff, alumni, and community members of all ages, as well as Ferrum students and their families, have spent time in Schoolfield Hall performing, or helping with costumes and sets, and enjoying plays. Pianist David Mitchell of Rocky Mount, for example, reminisced after Stephenson’s funeral about the many people he has met and his varied experiences participating in the “labor of love” that “brought countless hours of enjoyment” when he provided accompaniment for plays in Schoolfield Hall from 1995 to the present.
Old buildings transformed for new purposes can have intriguing and frustrating quirks. “I do not exaggerate when I tell people it took me 30 years to find my way around all of this building,” Hanlon wrote. “Theatre is such a multidisciplinary art that the building needs not only rehearsal space and faculty and business offices, but also work spaces and storage for building trades, sewing, makeup, laundry, props and costumes for all kinds of realistic and fantastical stories, and musical instruments. At first I was so in awe of the talents of dramatists (I still am!) that I was too shy to step on the stage or peek backstage when Rex asked me to help with research and scriptwriting. Now that I do other jobs and I’ve even been a stage manager once, I constantly learn new things from our students and colleagues. I love doing it in a historic building.”
The large bell that served the chapel in a steeple on top of Schoolfield Hall was installed in a spot of garden next to the building in May 2008, with a plaque re-dedicating it in honor of the leadership of The United Methodist Church for its support of higher education and its “continued generosity to Ferrum College.” The bell was one of many treasures that President Emerita Jennifer Braaten retrieved from storage to display on the campus. Former President David Johns started a tradition in 2019 of ringing the bell before the graduation ceremony. (See a brief video at this link.)
Ferrum College President Mirta Martin said, “Schoolfield Hall has stood as a witness to a century of learning, worship, creativity, and community at Ferrum College. To celebrate its 100th anniversary with ‘Faith of Our Fathers,’ the final work of our legendary Professor Emeritus Dr. Rex Stephenson, is both joyful and deeply meaningful. This performance honors our past, uplifts our present, and reminds us of the enduring spirit that makes Ferrum College such a special place.”
Crocker spoke at the dedication of the Rex Stephenson Theatre in 2023 about how she came to a drama festival as a high school student in Franklin County, and decided to come to college at Ferrum in 1998. She performed with the Jack Tale Players and Blue Ridge Dinner Theatre as a student, and returned to teach theatre arts in 2018. She said, “Schoolfield Hall served the college as a sacred space for decades before the renovations in the early 1980s and I don’t think its nature has changed since it evolved into the theatre. I often talk with BRDT patrons who are alumni and still refer to Schoolfield Hall as the chapel. The building is as sacred as it ever was to those of us who have invested our time in various projects over the years within these walls, and it will be for the next 100 years.”
Also in Schoolfield Hall during Homecoming Weekend, the 50th anniversary of the Jack Tale Players will be celebrated with mainstage Jack Tale shows on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.
Click here for performance details and tickets.
Click here for the full Homecoming Weekend schedule.
Click here for 2019 photos and video of the first ringing of the Schoolfield bell in decades.
Click here for merchandise celebrating Schoolfield Hall at Ferrum College Campus Store.
Recent photograph of Schoolfield Hall at top of page courtesy of Dr. Bob Pohlad.
Performance poster with blend of old and new photos by Assistant Professor Rebecca Crocker.
