Although the local doors of Tennessee Temple University will close at the end of this academic year, the reach of the Christian school will be felt for many years to come.
Locally and across the world, thousands of graduates not only are stronger in their faith because of their attendance at the evangelical Highland Park school but also have used the various degrees it offered to become ministers, missionaries, teachers and a variety of public servants.
Indiana native Lee Roberson came to Chattanooga in the early 1940s to be the pastor of a middling Baptist church in a thriving neighborhood but had outsized dreams for what could be accomplished there and the faith in God to show him the way.
Tennessee Temple University, founded in 1946, was one of those dreams, as was a radio station to broadcast the good news, a citywide bus ministry, a rural camp, and a mission for the down and out.
The school had its heyday in the late 1970s and early 1980s when, despite having strict rules on behavior and dress in an increasingly secular society, its enrollment reached more than 4,000 students.
Enrollment dwindled to the hundreds over the next 30 years, but as recently as a year ago a proposed move to Woodland Park Baptist Church seemed to offer new life. But that plan didn't work out, and students now are being encouraged to enroll at Christian merger partner Piedmont International University in Winston-Salem, N.C.
Chattanooga, though, can be proud of the legacy of the Crusaders -- the name of the school's athletic teams -- who attended Tennessee Temple through the years and the pioneer Crusader -- Roberson -- who had the dream for it all.