Paul Lewis Boynton
Nacogdoches, Nacogdoches County, Texas
Marker Inscription
President of Stephen F. Austin State Teachers College (SFASTC) from 1942 to 1958, Paul Lewis Boynton made vital contributions to the institution’s future. Born in Belton (Bell Co.), Boynton attended Sam Houston State Teachers College. He then served as principal of Lufkin High School and taught in Wichita Falls before attending George Peabody College in Nashville, Tennessee, where he earned MA and PhD degrees in Psychology. Boynton was chairman of Peabody College’s department of Psychology when he was named the second president of STASTC (now Stephen F. Austin State University). As male students withdrew to fight in World War II, Boynton worked to keep the college from closing by convincing the federal government to open a Women’s Army Corps School here in 1943. In letter campaigns, he kept in contact with students wherever they served. When war made some federal operations in the area obsolete, Boynton secured buildings and farm property, leading to the opening of a department of forestry here in 1945. Enrollment at SFASTC increased dramatically in the 1950s. Boynton first met this demand by securing temporary buildings. His master plan focused on upgrading the school’s faculty, implementing a strong system of student guidance and providing permanent educational structures. In 1958, while at work, boynton suffered a heart attack and died shortly afterwards in Memorial Hospital. Today, Paul Boynton is remembered for his ingenuity in keeping sfastc open during World War II and creating a foundation for the institution’s move to university status and success as one of Texas’ foremost centers for higher education.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Paul Lewis Boynton, a Texas-born psychologist trained at Peabody College, became president of Stephen F. Austin State Teachers College in 1942 just as World War II drained its male students away. To keep the school alive he persuaded the federal government to open a Women's Army Corps training school on campus in 1943 and secured surplus buildings and land that launched a forestry department in 1945, then guided a surge of postwar enrollment until his sudden death in 1958.
Why it matters
Boynton's wartime ingenuity shows how America's colleges survived World War II and then expanded to meet the postwar demand for higher education that transformed the nation.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
When Paul Lewis Boynton took charge of Stephen F. Austin State Teachers College in 1942, the whole country was reorganizing itself around a war. Pearl Harbor was less than a year in the past, and campuses across the United States were emptying as young men left their classrooms for military service. For a teachers' college in East Texas, that exodus was an existential threat.
The early 1940s were a precarious time for American higher education. Enrollments built on male students collapsed almost overnight, and tuition-dependent schools faced the real possibility of closing their doors for the duration. Survival often meant improvising — finding new students, new purposes, and new partners, frequently the federal government itself, which was suddenly the largest organizing force in national life.
Nacogdoches, one of the oldest towns in Texas, was home to a young institution still finding its footing. The choices its leadership made in these war years would decide not just whether it survived, but what kind of school it would become when peace returned.
People & events
Boynton was a Texan by birth, from Belton, and a scholar by training. He worked his way up through education the hard way — attending Sam Houston State Teachers College, serving as principal of Lufkin High School, teaching in Wichita Falls — before earning master's and doctoral degrees in psychology at George Peabody College in Nashville. He was chairing Peabody's psychology department when he was called to become the college's second president.
He arrived to a crisis and met it with imagination. As male students withdrew to fight, Boynton fought to keep the college alive by persuading the federal government to open a Women's Army Corps training school on the campus in 1943 — an infusion of purpose and people at the very moment the school needed both. He kept up letter campaigns with students scattered across the theaters of war, refusing to let the institution lose touch with its own.
His resourcefulness outlasted the emergency. When wartime federal operations in the area became obsolete, he secured their surplus buildings and farm property, and out of that came a department of forestry in 1945 — a lasting new strength born from salvaged wartime assets. As enrollment surged in the 1950s, he first met the crowds with temporary buildings, then set a master plan aimed at stronger faculty, real student guidance, and permanent structures. In 1958, while still at work, he suffered a heart attack and died shortly afterward.
Its place in the American story
Boynton's story is a local version of something that played out on hundreds of American campuses. World War II nearly hollowed out the nation's colleges, and their survival often depended on leaders clever enough to bind their institutions to the war effort — through military training programs, research, and federal partnerships — until their students came home.
And come home they did, in numbers no one had seen before. The postwar years brought a historic surge in college enrollment, powered in large part by returning veterans and a national conviction that higher education was the path into the middle class. Schools that had scraped through the war suddenly had to build fast to keep up.
That two-part drama — barely surviving the war, then scrambling to meet the boom that followed — is the through-line of Boynton's presidency. The temporary buildings he threw up for the crowds, and the master plan he drew for permanent ones, mirror the growing pains of American higher education as it transformed from a privilege of the few into an expectation of the many.
If you visit
You're on the campus of what is now a full university in Nacogdoches, one of the oldest towns in Texas, and the marker invites you to see the place as it was in the anxious 1940s — a small teachers' college wondering whether it would make it through the war.
As you look around at the mix of buildings and the working forests and grounds associated with the school, remember that some of this institution's enduring character was assembled out of wartime necessity: a training school for women in uniform, surplus property turned into a forestry program, temporary structures raised to catch a flood of postwar students.
If your travels take you through the piney woods of East Texas, the campus makes a rewarding stop for anyone curious about how the home front and higher education were woven together. Walk it thinking about a president who kept writing letters to his students wherever the war had sent them, and who was still at his work the day it ended.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Paul Lewis Boynton
Related events
- · World War II
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Women's Army Corps School
Nacogdoches, TX
When World War II drained young men — and students — from campuses across the country, the U.S. Army turned college classrooms into training grounds for its newest recruits: women. With enrollment at Stephen F. Austin State Teachers College fallen below 500, the Army opened Administration School No. 1 here in 1943 to teach members of the Women's Army Corps the clerical and administrative trades of a modern military. Housed in the dormitories and drilled in six-week courses, roughly 3,000 women passed through before the school closed in 1944, each graduating class thanking the town with a variety show at the high school.
Wisely Hall
Nacogdoches, TX
When Stephen F. Austin State University moved to the edge of Nacogdoches in 1924, student housing was scarce, and the Great Depression soon froze plans for expansion. President Alton Birdwell and business manager J. H. Wisely turned to the New Deal's Public Works Administration, and in 1935–36 the town's first PWA project rose: a men's dormitory that quickly became a favorite gathering spot. During World War II it housed a Women's Army Corps unit before returning to student use, and in 1948 it was renamed Wisely Hall in honor of Wisely.
Birdwell Field, Aikman Gym and the Women's Recreation Center
Nacogdoches, TX
When Stephen F. Austin State Teachers College was funded in 1921, the legislature paid for only one building—the Austin Building, or "Old Main." President Alton W. Birdwell, convinced the young college needed more, arranged its first athletic field in 1923, even before the campus moved to North Street. Over the following decades the college added Aikman Gymnasium, a 3,500-seat multipurpose hall given by philanthropist Frank Aikman, and a Women's Recreation Center built in 1935 with Public Works Administration help, which doubled as a WAAC post exchange during World War II. Memorial Stadium later replaced Birdwell Field, honoring the college's WWII dead.
Stephen F. Austin State Teachers College During World War II
Nacogdoches, TX
When the United States entered World War II after Pearl Harbor, the president of Stephen F. Austin State Teachers College gathered students and faculty to meet the national emergency—and the campus emptied into the war. Enrollment fell by sixty percent, football was suspended, and a campus flag bore more than a thousand blue stars for those serving and twenty-four gold ones for those who died. In a notable distinction, the Army chose SFA in 1943 as the first college in the nation to host a Women's Army Corps training school. After the war, returning veterans on the G.I. Bill swelled the college and its recreation grounds were rededicated as Memorial Park and Memorial Stadium.