1930

This was the era of the Great Depression and like other institutions of higher learning, COM had to become creative if it were to survive. For a brief time, COM issued scrip in lieu of cash to its employees and in 1932, the worst year of the Great Depression, faculty members “tithed” their salaries by accepting a ten percent pay reduction. Many students paid COM in food that was used by Dining Hall cooks. In addition, a garden was maintained on campus to provide the Dining Hall with fresh produce.

COM not only survived the Great Depression but by the middle of the decade was able to hire the faculty necessary to start its first marching band. It also purchased the Industrial School for Boys, a recently closed local Catholic boys school. The forty-three acre property included five buildings, the largest of which became Frank Davis Hall, a men’s dormitory. By the end of the decade, COM was the largest denominational junior college in Texas, and work was begun on Laura Virginia Groner Hall, a new dormitory for the women.