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Tributes from students of A.C. Reid and others  
A bell in the Harris Grand Carillon at Wait Chapel at Wake Forest University rings regularly in honor and memory of A.C. Reid, inscribed:
I sing of A.C. Reid, whose gentle spirit and flashing mind stirred the hearts and illumined the minds of many generations of students.
On this the one hundred twenty-seventh commencement of Wake Forest University (1965), we honor Dr. Reid on the occasion of his retirement…For more than four decades Dr. Reid has been steadfast and powerful in his high purposes at this College. He is a towering beacon of wisdom, integrity, and inspiration to whom many of us have turned often through the years as we sought to believe and love the right things in a world which makes it difficult for us to know what to believe and what to love.
Dr. John W. Chandler
Wake Forest College Class of 1945
Former President, Williams College
“Dr. A.C. Reid is one of only two people whose inspiration has led me to hang their picture on the wall of my office. Dr. Reid is there because he taught me how to think.
When I was a student at Wake Forest College, my first exam from Dr. Reid, in his Philosophy class, was the lowest grade I had ever made in my life. I went to see him and I told him I was trying to get into medical school, had never had a grade that low in any other course, and simply couldn’t have a grade like that in this one. He looked at me, shook his head the way he would often do before speaking, and then asked me: “Mr. Jones, did any of your other teachers ever ask you…to think?” I sat there dumbfounded for a moment…I really had no idea what he was talking about. I knew that in all my other courses I could go to the chalkboard and fill it up with formulas, from organic chemistry or some other subject, but he obviously meant something else. So I looked back and said "I guess not, Dr. Reid, but if you would be willing to take me on and teach me how to think I''ll do whatever you say." He was visibly moved by that, and invited me to come by his office on a regular basis – we had to negotiate times because of my labs, but he was patient and would wait until I got through with the labs. He gave me a series of assignments, and we discussed a variety of serious philosophical topics. Finally he allowed me to retake the test, I got an A, and he became a fast friend.
One of the most important things he taught me was that the role of a teacher is not merely to impart information, which he certainly did. But as I reflected on Dr. Reid and what he did with me I realized that what a real teacher also does is to teach a student to use his own intellect to seek truth, to realize what his own purpose in life is, to understand how important life is. In the process of all of that he introduced me for the first time to Dr. Albert Schweitzer, and talked about Dr. Schweitzer''s work. I became fascinated: at that particular time in my life I was trying to answer what I thought was a call to full-time Christian service as a missionary, but in reading and understanding Dr. Schweitzer’s work I realized that I did not have to go to Africa or India, because Schweitzer advised that each person was to find his or her own Lambaréné. So gradually with advice from Dr. Reid and others I realized my place of service wasn''t Africa, but the medically underserved people of Eastern North Carolina. I made my life of that, first as a practitioner, then when I was given a blank page to develop an educational program for doctors to serve in that area. In different ways, my whole life has been devoted to serving the underserved people in that part of our state. And it all came back to what Dr. Reid had taught me, about what a life of service was about. Whatever success I may have had really started when he decided to take on a naïve young boy from a small Indian village in remote North Carolina and teach him how to think. I''ll always be indebted to him, because he personifies what a teacher is and should be. I hope that as a teacher of physicians I have been able to impart some of that same philosophy myself. If so, this would be a small tribute to this giant of a man I was privileged to have as a teacher.
I honestly am not sure I''d be where I am if I had not had the opportunity to be his student – he’s a giant of a man in my memory. So whatever I can do to help honor his memory, I would like to do.”
Jim Jones, MD
Past Chair, Department of Family Medicine
East Carolina University School of Medicine
Past President
American Academy of Family Practice
The shadow cast by certain men grows longer with the years. That shadow is a strange and glorious phenomenon that cannot be measured…Because these men…are somehow set apart, their lives become the wellsprings of legend and anecdote. It is as if in the narrating, the story teller absorbs some of the nobility and courage and gentleness and wisdom of the man who is the story’s hero.
I heard such stories about Dr. Albert Clayton Reid long before I first visited Wake Forest University and certainly long before I was honored to serve as its president.
He was Reid the early riser, Reid who locked his classroom door once the bell had rung, Reid who offered withering sarcasm for snobbery or pretentiousness – and gentle words for those who sorrowed or for young men and women seeking truth.
It is fact that Dr. Reid is a distinguished scholar. He is a trenchant writer and speaker who spurns the use of superfluous words. Chapel audiences, whether at Wake Forest University or Harvard University, pay him careful attention. It is now our good fortune that Dr. Reid has written of those truths which he holds dearest and which he taught best. Once again, he offers us an opportunity to learn from him. As one of his later pupils, but surely not his last, I am grateful.
James R. Scales, President
Wake Forest University
Preface to Christ or Confusion, by A.C. Reid (1973)
Albert Clayton Reid had many dear friends. What is most important about his friendship is that he had an extraordinary capacity for helping people grow in mind and spirit. This may have been his grandest talent. Witness those fiercely loyal former Wake Forest students and other friends from a wide variety of life’s stations. They loved and admired him, and many of them are better people because of him. He was teacher and mentor to generations of students.
Thomas A. Hearn, Jr., President
Wake Forest University
Foreword to The A.C. Reid Legacy (1988)
The number of unforgettable persons in anyone’s lifetime is seldom large. For myself I have previously mentioned three; here I say a little of the fourth and last: Professor A.C. Reid, for some decades professor of philosophy at Wake Forest College. His demeanor is so modest that for many he might be quite unnoticeable. In association with him through the years, one gets an awareness of his spiritual worth. Going for many years to talk to his students, I decided he is the best teacher of philosophy I have ever known, especially for those beginning the subject, than which there is no more important time in philosophical training. He has not simply instructed his pupils in the ideas philosophers have held, but also taught them to think for themselves. Students of his now occupy positions in some of the best colleges in the country.
That Dr. Reid is definitely orthodox in his Christian faith, and I heretical, had no effect on our close friendship. I have been conscious of a religious kinship with him – a feeling even when he is not with me, that it is good that he is “there.” Though I am sure he would rather I not say it, I think he has the temperament of a saint.
Dr. Alban Widgery
Duke University
A Philosopher’s Pilgrimage (1961; pp. 160-61)
The life of Dr. Reid reminds us there is no limit to what one man can accomplish when he gives God the credit…He has been acclaimed by great scholars and illustrious former students. We all knew and respected that Dr. Reid, but the man we knew and loved best was the friendly, kindly man who came back home to Wake Forest after he retired from teaching at WFU. He drove down our streets in his distinctive light blue Cadillac with fins, shopped in the stores and picked up his mail, at the post office.
His familiar greeting was, "What''s the good news?" He loved going to the grocery store, as much to talk to Bruce Keith as to buy groceries which he bought one at a time, so he would have an excuse to go back later in the day.
For many, he was "my Sunday school teacher," and there were some pleasant days in July when his class would honor him on his birthday in the beautiful garden he had created in the back yard of his home on West Sycamore Street. It was a spot he loved dearly. Perhaps we will best remember him for his love of dogwood trees and his wish that everyone in Wake Forest would plant one. He loved to recount how the lovely spring blooming trees came to grace our town. And he never thought there were enough of them.
He died the day after Arbor Day, and a few short weeks before his beloved dogwoods will be in bloom, but one memorial which we know would bring a smile to his gentle countenance would be for each of us to plant a dogwood tree for Dr. Reid.
His Sunday School Class, 1988
More about A.C. Reid
Read Excerpts from A.C. Reid’s writings
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