When Thomas Price came to Los Angeles Baptist Theological Seminary in 1948, he doubled the seminary enrollment. (LABTS’s college division was larger, relatively speaking, in the double digits.) He had come to the school after serving in the army during World War II, as one of a few veterans who bolstered the size of LABTS. Though caught unaware by the small size and limited budget of the school, he later wrote in a letter to his children that LABTS enjoyed a unique sense of camaraderie among its students and faculty because of these shared difficult circumstances.

In 1949, Price (being the only graduate student at LABTS with a liberal arts degree) was asked to teach a course. He also helped in the registrar’s office as an assistant, dealing with transcripts, registration, and class scheduling. When the full-time registrar, Lawrence Starkey, stepped down, Price took over while continuing to teach liberal arts courses on the modest salary the school could afford him.

Dr. John Hotchkiss, son of Dr. Herbert Hotchkiss and a student during Price’s tenure, said that Price was “a skilled problem solver and personal encourager to any anxious student.”

Price’s career at LABTS, LABC, and TMC was emblematic of what it meant to serve at the school in those days: working multiple roles for little pay, all while trusting that the Lord would faithfully bring good fruit out of that sacrifice. Upon his retirement in 1988, Price wrote in a letter to his family, “In spite of the tight money situation, we never lacked…The Lord was always gracious to supply.”

To learn more about TMU’s history, visit our Centennial website here.