The Hitts of Mississippi and related families

Born in 1911, in Morgantown, Mississippi, Eddleman graduated from
Mississippi College, an institution of the Mississippi Baptist Convention,
in Clinton. After finishing his doctorate at Southern Baptist Theological
Seminary, Louisville, Kentucky, in 1935, he was appointed as a missionary
to Palestine, where he worked for six years in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and
Nazareth. During his stay in Palestine, he married Sarah Fox, another
missionary. As war threatened to engulf Palestine in 1941, Eddleman
returned to the United States to teach Old Testament and Hebrew at New
Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisiana. He taught there for
over a year before moving to Louisville to assume the pastorate of
Parkland Baptist Church. He stayed for ten years. In addition to being
a pastor, Eddleman served as superintendent of the church.

Eddleman believed that Baptist schools stood at a crossroads. With the
increasing support of public education in the United States, he saw
Baptist schools threatened with extinction unless they could maintain
their academic standards in the midst of standardization and accreditation
pressures. If Baptist colleges, such as Georgetown, were going to
survive, they would have to provide distinctive training, producing
aggressive, capable Christian leaders in all fields of life.

The major issue of Eddleman's tenure was whether to merge Georgetown
College with a central Kentucky Baptist university, which would be
located in Louisville, Kentucky. Some Louisville Baptists wanted to
start a new college, which would be less expensive and more convenient to
metropolitan residents. Leaders of the Long Run Baptist Association
began negotiations with the trustees of Georgetown College to support
programs for arts and sciences and technical and vocational training in
Louisville. Money was committed, land was bought, and construction was
started, but the trustees rejected the proposal to sponsor the extension
in 1958, a move later confirmed by the General Association of Baptists in
Kentucky.

Georgetown College, during Eddleman's administration, continued the
growth that had been restored by his predecessor. Enrollment and faculty
expanded; much of the college's debt was paid; more international students
-- from Israel, Nigeria, West Germany, Cuba, Rhodesia, and South Korea --
attended; a graduate program in education was added to the curriculum;
a new men's dormitory, Anderson Hall, was built; and the V.V. Cooke library
and student center was completed. In sports, football, which had been
suspended the year before Eddleman came, started again, and basketball
became prominent once again.

In the midst of the controversy over whether to move the college to
Louisville, Eddleman had accepted the presidency of New Orleans Baptist
Theological Seminary, where he remained until his retirement in 1970.
He continued to be active, working as an editor for the Baptist Sunday
School Board in Nashville, Tennessee, and as a writer and teacher in
Baptist institutions in Pineville, Kentucky, and Dallas, Texas.
He returned to Louisville, where he died in July 1995.