May 29, 2000
Southwestern Seminary opens
Ralph Smith Leadership Center
___FORT WORTH--The first phase of the Ralph Smith Leadership Development Center was dedicated May 12 at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.
___Located at the southeast corner of the seminary's Fort Worth campus, the facility currently includes 32 guest rooms and a business center, the Ray Riley Alumni Center and the Lucille Loyd Meadows Visitors Center.
SOUTHWESTERN SEMINARY celebrated the completion of phase 1 of a three-phase construction project with a ribbon-cutting ceremony May 12. The Ray Riley Alumni Center and Lucille Loyd Meadows Visitors Center of the Ralph Smith Leadership Development Center were open for tours after the ceremony. Cutting the ribbon are Ralph Smith, Eloise Rouse, seminary President Ken Hemphill and Harold Riley._(Photo by Bryan Murley)
___When completed, the 130,000-square-foot complex will have 96 guest rooms and conference facilities for 1,200 people. Phase two, with 25 guest rooms, meeting rooms of various sizes, an English garden, dining area and banquet facilities, is scheduled to open in spring 2001.
___The overall complex is named for Ralph Smith, longtime pastor of Hyde Park Baptist Church in Austin. Both Smith and Harold Riley, the donor who honored him in funding a large part of the complex, were on hand for the ribbon-cutting.
___Also present among the 200 celebrants were David Fite, Southwestern's longtime director of continuing education who originally had the vision for the facility, and Eloise Meadows Rouse, daughter of Lucille Meadows, who made one of the first large contributions to the complex.
WHEN COMPLETED, the 130,000-square-foot Ralph Smith Leadership Development Center will have 96 guest rooms and conference facilities for 1,200 people. Phase two, with 25 guest rooms, meeting rooms of various sizes, an English garden, dining area and banquet facilities, is scheduled to open in spring 2001.
___Riley hailed the day as an opportunity to thank his father, who while a college student preparing for the ministry taught Riley, then a teenager, the importance of faith. When Riley asked his father how the family could survive without anyone working, his father told him that when God calls, God provides.
___"From that lowly beginning in that family with no one working, where our money would run out and God would provide, I learned first-hand the importance of believing," Riley said.
___Rouse recalled that her mother, who graduated from the seminary in 1923 when she was 20, also relied on God's provision throughout her education.
___"She, too, went through her education with nothing and telling us all our lives how when she was down to nothing she would say, 'Lord, I believe this is where you want me to be, and if it is I know you'll provide," Rouse said, adding that God always provided.
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