North Greenville University Archives

05/25/2026

In honor of Memorial Day, the following is a biography of a North Greenville student who sacrificed his life in WWII. While he was overseas, he wrote a letter to Dr. Donnan and his family. Dr. Donnan's granddaughter, Donna Hinds Joyner, was kind enough to let us make a copy of that letter. It is included in this post.

North Greenville’s Paratrooper: Rufus Garner Rushton

Rufus Garner Rushton was born in Oconee County, South Carolina, on October 23, 1919, to parents Christopher Columbus Rushton and Martha Melinda Sanders Rushton. He spent the first years of his life on a farm in Oconee County and was the fifth child born out of eight. His older sister, Elsie, died in 1917 of diphtheria when she was just 6 years old. Around 1923, the Rushton family relocated to the Monaghan Mill community in Greenville, where Christopher Rushton found employment in the textile mills, reflecting the broader migration of many South Carolina families from agricultural life to mill work during the early twentieth century.

Rufus's life changed forever in 1930 when his mom died suddenly at the age of 38. It is not completely clear what happened to Rufus after the death of his mother, but according to Jean Martin Flynn in her book "North Greenville Junior College: A History", Rufus ended up homeless as a teenager. According to Flynn's account, "one day in the summer of 1940, the Greenville Welfare Office called Dr. Donnan and asked him whether he could take care of a boy the police had picked up in Greenville. The boy had no home and was spending his time on the streets. Dr. Donnan told the case worker to send the boy up, and so Rufus Rushton came to North Greenville. The Elks Club gave ten dollars a month towards his support, Dr. Donnan provided him some scholarship work, and the school bore the rest of the expense."

Rufus was placed in the 8th grade when he started at North Greenville, and he also worked as a taxi cab driver for the Yellow Cab Company. He finished the 9th grade before, on December 7, 1941, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and brought the United States into World War II. A few days later, on December 11, 1941, Rufus traveled to Charlotte, North Carolina, and enlisted in the United States Army.

Following his enlistment, Rufus trained at Fort Jackson in South Carolina and later at Camp Wheeler in Georgia and Fort Benning before ultimately being stationed at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. There, he served as a private first class paratrooper. On November 5, 1942, he married Mildred Carolyn O’Shields. After a brief trip to Georgia, Rufus returned to military duty while Mildred remained in Greenville awaiting his return from overseas service.

In August 1943, Rufus deployed to the European Theater as a member of the 101st Airborne Division. During his service abroad, he participated in campaigns across France, Holland, and Belgium. He survived multiple combat jumps, including the D-Day invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944, one of the most consequential military operations of the Second World War. Throughout his deployment, students and faculty from North Greenville maintained correspondence with Rufus, reflecting the deep connection he retained with the institution that had offered him stability and opportunity during his youth.

Rufus’s military service came to a tragic end during the Battle of the Bulge. On January 3, 1945, while fighting in Belgium, he suffered a severe abdominal wound caused by shrapnel. Although surgeons initially repaired the injury, he developed pneumonia and died on January 7, 1945. Rufus was only twenty-five years old. He is buried in Graceland West Cemetery in Greenville, South Carolina.

05/11/2026

Congratulations to Laura Cervantez for graduating with honors from North Greenville! Laura has been the archive work study for the last three years and has set the bar very high for future archive work study students. During her time in the archives, Laura indexed the Mountain Laurel, wrote a guest post about the history of the Mountain Laurel, transcribed oral history interviews, boxed up books, worked on a student archive project, and used her skills as an art major to design a White Hall sticker as a fundraiser for the archive. I could not have asked for a better work study, and while Laura will be missed in the archive, she's not going very far! Laura will be working full-time at NGU as an admissions counselor.
-Joanna Beasley, NGU Archivist

05/08/2026

This year marks the 90th anniversary of the first graduating college class of North Greenville. In honor of that milestone, here is the history of how North Greenville went from being a high school to a university.

Faith in the Foothills: How a Little Mountain High School Became a University

"In overcoming the power of darkness, North Greenville has done more good than all the revenue officers and sheriffs combined for a hundred years. In instilling a love for Christ, it has changed the streams once used for whiskey into rivers of baptism."- Dr. E.B. Crain

When the founders of North Greenville High School met in 1891 to discuss opening a high school in the "Dark Corner" of Greenville County, South Carolina, they could not possibly have known what their little school would one day become. Their main purpose at the time was to bring a Christian education to an area that was known more for murder and moonshine than faith and scholars. They believed that if they could offer their youth a solid education grounded in the word of God, their children would have better opportunities than they had.

The school struggled financially from the very beginning, but God used faithful men and women to keep North Greenville afloat even when similar schools in other areas were closing their doors. By the 1920s, however, broader educational reforms in South Carolina threatened the school’s future. In 1924, the South Carolina General Assembly passed the 6-0-1 law, which was legislation designed to modernize and standardize public education across the state. As public high schools rapidly expanded, private secondary schools such as North Greenville faced mounting challenges. Families who once depended upon church-supported academies increasingly had access to free public education close to home. Yet the rise of public high schools also created a new opportunity: growing numbers of graduates now sought access to higher education.

North Greenville’s leadership recognized that survival would require transformation. Rather than competing indefinitely as a private high school, the institution could meet an emerging need by becoming a junior college that served students who desired additional education beyond high school. The trustees began seriously exploring this possibility in 1928 when they hired Dr. J. T. Bowden as a financial agent to raise between $150,000 and $200,000 for expansion. In 1929, the trustees also petitioned the South Carolina Baptist Convention to appoint a committee to study the feasibility of establishing a junior college at North Greenville. The fifteen-member committee ultimately recommended against the proposal in 1930, citing the school’s debt, inadequate facilities, and limited landholdings.

The Southern Baptist Convention Home Mission Board, which had long supported North Greenville as one of its mountain mission schools, shared similar concerns. Though sympathetic to the vision, the board believed the school lacked the resources necessary to sustain collegiate work. At the same time, many Baptist leaders feared that additional junior colleges might weaken enrollment at established senior institutions such as Furman University.

In spite of all of this, the North Greenville trustees and the school's principal, Dr. M.C. Donnan, quietly continued their determination to see North Greenville become a junior college. In the fall of 1933, Dr. Donnan offered room and board to Sam Lawton and his family in exchange for Lawton completing a special project for the school. Sam Lawton was a former faculty member of North Greenville who was finishing his dissertation work through Vanderbilt University to become the first born-blind person to earn a PhD in the United States. The special project was to create a survey of junior colleges to examine the advisability of North Greenville becoming a junior college.

Accompanied by his wife Alice, Lawton spent months traveling across South Carolina, North Carolina, and Georgia, visiting junior colleges, interviewing administrators, and studying their academic programs. Their findings proved remarkably encouraging. In several cases, the Lawtons concluded that North Greenville’s faculty possessed stronger academic credentials than instructors at many existing junior colleges.

When Lawton completed his fifty-page report, he presented it to the trustees in the prayer room of Taylor Hall, the old men’s dormitory. Convinced by the findings, the trustees unanimously voted to establish junior college instruction at North Greenville. Lawton even proposed renaming the institution “Aurora College,” reflecting its location in the northernmost part of Greenville County and its mission to spread the light of Christian education throughout the region. Though the name was never adopted, the vision behind it reflected the school’s growing sense of purpose. Lawton was subsequently elected Dean of Instruction, becoming the first academic dean of North Greenville Junior College. At the time, only one other blind individual in the United States served as an academic dean of a college. Dr. Donnan was also elected as the first president of the college.

Once the trustees approved for North Greenville to become a junior college, the next phase of work began. For the junior college to be successful, it needed the support of senior colleges in the area. Dr. Lawton, Alice Lawton, and Dr. Donnan traveled extensively to gain the support of neighboring institutions. They successfully persuaded Coker College, Wofford College, and Furman University to accept transfer students from North Greenville.

The negotiations with Furman proved particularly revealing. Furman’s president initially proposed requiring North Greenville graduates to pass examinations before receiving transfer credit. Lawton objected, arguing that such requirements unfairly questioned the qualifications of North Greenville’s faculty. He noted that while many introductory courses at larger universities were taught by upperclassmen, every North Greenville instructor held at least a master’s degree. His argument ultimately prevailed, and Furman agreed to accept North Greenville students without examination.

The next challenge was to get the South Carolina Department of Education to recognize North Greenville as a college so that its students would have teacher certificates when they graduated. Together, the Lawtons made their case to J.H. Hope, the superintendent of education in Columbia. Mr. Hope pointed out that the custom of his department was to wait several years for a school to prove itself first. Sam Lawton answered, "I am only asking you to recognize what we have." Mr. Hope was so impressed by their arguments that he granted his approval and gave them a recognition letter to take back to North Greenville.

The first year of college at North Greenville went well, so the trustees approved the second year of college to be added. In 1936, the first college class of North Greenville Junior College graduated. Mr. J.H. Hope, the superintendent of the SC Department of Education, showed his support of North Greenville by serving as the commencement speaker that year. Nettie Onell Barnette was the first college graduate to receive a diploma. The other graduates that year included Lessie Lee Campbell, John D. Carter Jr., Grady Culbreth, Cleo Evans, Marion Moorhead, Marguerite McKinney, Thomas L. Neely, and Arthur Boyd Turner. These nine trailblazers represented the beginning of a new era in the school's history.

For several decades, North Greenville thrived as a junior college serving mostly the Upstate and broader region. Yet by the late 1980s, the institution again faced a severe financial crisis. Enrollment declined sharply, finances deteriorated, and portions of campus property, including the campus lake and surrounding land, were sold in an effort to keep the school operating.

By 1991, many observers believed closure was imminent. The school’s financial instability, declining enrollment, and perceived drift from its Christian mission prompted the South Carolina Baptist Convention to appoint a committee to consider whether North Greenville should close altogether. However, the trustees had other plans for North Greenville. They gathered together and prayed for hours. When they were finished, they decided that God wasn’t done with North Greenville yet.

Their search for new leadership led them to Dr. James Epting, a former Dean of Students whose father had also attended North Greenville. Epting accepted the presidency fully aware that the institution stood at a crossroads. He believed that the school’s future depended not only upon financial reform but also upon a renewed commitment to its Christian identity.

Under Dr. Epting’s leadership, North Greenville adopted the motto “Where Christ Makes the Difference,” emphasizing the integration of faith throughout campus life. Cost-cutting measures stabilized finances, but Epting also recognized that long-term survival required institutional expansion. In 1992, North Greenville began the transition from a junior college to a four-year institution.

The prayers of the trustees were answered in ways they probably could not have imagined. The transformation proved remarkable. North Greenville achieved accreditation as a four-year college in 1994 and experienced sustained growth throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s. New academic buildings and residence halls reshaped the campus, donor support increased significantly, and graduate programs were eventually added. In 2005, the institution officially became North Greenville University.

Despite all the odds, God has used North Greenville to further His kingdom for over 134 years. This mission statement was laid out by the current president, Dr. Gene Fant, but has been the same throughout the school's history: North Greenville seeks to glorify God by cultivating graduates who are equipped to serve as transformational leaders for church and society. What began as a small mountain high school for the children of the Dark Corner evolved into a university serving students from across the nation and around the world while continuing to carry forward the mission envisioned by its founders in 1891.

05/05/2026

We need your help to complete our collection!

We are potentially missing quite a few commencement programs. If you have one of these, please let us know. We'd love to have the original, but we'd also be happy to get a copy of it. There may not have been programs for all of these years. We may also be missing summer and fall graduation programs for years that are not listed below. So, if you have a summer or fall graduation program, please check with us to see if we need a copy.

The pictures below are from 1903- the oldest commencement program we have in the archive.

Thank you in advance for any help you can offer!

Missing commencement programs:

1902
1904-1913
1915-1917
1919
1922
1924-1925
1928-1929
1931-1945
1947-1948
1951-1952
1954-1955
1957-1961
1963
1965-1966
1972
2019 (December)

05/01/2026

Happy May Day! 🌷🌳

04/28/2026

Nettie Onell Burnette: North Greenville's First College Graduate

The following biography of Nettie Onell Burnette was written for the NGU Archives by her great-niece, Dr. Jenny Hunter. The pictures included in this post are courtesy of Dr. Hunter and Carolyn Mason. Thank you to Dr. Hunter for sharing her aunt's life with us!

Through a life rooted in faith and service, Nettie Onell Burnette showed that one person’s quiet dedication can leave a lasting impact for generations.

Nettie was born on November 7, 1915, in Spartanburg County, South Carolina, more specifically the rural community of Campobello, whose name fittingly means “beautiful field.” The land around her was rich and rolling, perfectly suited for peach orchards, where cool air settled into the valleys and protected the fruit. Yet, behind that beauty, the farming life she was a part of demanded resilience.

One of twelve children, Nettie grew up when days were long, and work was hard. Farm life shaped her childhood: the heat of the South Carolina sun, the rhythm of the land, and a way of living powered by hands and animals, not machines, would be her foundation. Her community endured drought and hardship even before the Great Depression.

From those early years, Nettie carried perseverance, hard work, and faith. Named for her grandmother, Nettie Ballenger Burnette, and influenced by her grandfather, Reverend Benjamin Andrew Strange, she was grounded in a legacy of faith that would guide her. Amid beauty and struggle, her strength formed. She learned to endure, work, serve, and persist in faith, even when life was uncertain. Those lessons shaped the woman she became.

In 1936, she became the first student at North Greenville Junior College to receive an Associate’s Degree, setting a standard of determination and purpose, marking the beginning of a life devoted to serving others.

She began her nursing training in Marion, North Carolina, and in 1941, she passed the South Carolina State Board of Nursing exam. In August of that same year, just months before the United States entered World War II, she enlisted in the United States Army. As a nurse in the Army Nurse Corps stationed overseas, she cared for wounded soldiers during one of the most uncertain and fragile times in our nation’s history. While overseas, she visited many places and collected teacups and saucers. Her dainty collection was impressive.

When she shared stories from that time with me, she often spoke of a fighter pilot she loved named Hap. I remember her expression, how she would smile when she said his name, then grow quiet when she spoke of losing him in battle. She once told me she would never love another man. Her ability to carry both love and loss with such strength left a lasting impression on me.

After the war, Nettie continued her commitment to caring for others through her nursing and anesthesia work. In 1948, she served as a nurse at Patton Memorial Hospital in Hendersonville, North Carolina. The following year, she expanded her expertise as an anesthetist at Halifax District Hospital in Daytona Beach, Florida, and by 1952, she had returned to South Carolina to work at Greenville Memorial Hospital. She ultimately retired from St. Francis Hospital as a nurse anesthetist, concluding a distinguished medical career defined by skill, compassion, and dedication. Yet retirement did not mark the end of her service. She went on to open a childcare center, Kiddie Country Club, where she devoted herself to nurturing and guiding young children with the same warmth and attentiveness she had shown her patients. Caring for others was never simply her profession; it was the essence of who she was.

After she retired in the 70’s, she continued to live life fully. Nettie filled a role in my life I never knew I needed. She was more than my Great Aunt; she became my safe place and best friend.

My most cherished memories are simple. We went to the mall, played cards, watched soap operas, and solved puzzles. She taught me to care for African violets, and every evening, we watched Wheel of Fortune. She read, knitted, crocheted, and baked cinnamon bread. Ordinary moments became extraordinary with her.

She allowed me to travel with her. She took me to the World’s Fair in Tennessee, to visit the Amish in Virginia, and on summer vacations at the lake and in the North Carolina mountains. In Florida, we searched for seashells and biked on the beach. She gave me experiences I hadn’t imagined.

What I didn’t fully understand at the time was that she wasn’t just spending time with me; she was shaping me. Her furry friend, Rudolph the dachshund, also brightened our days and brought her so much joy.

At 78, she stood by me as Maid of Honor in 1993. In that moment, I felt the full weight of her love, strength, and a lifetime of memories wrapped around me like a steady embrace. A few years later, Nettie was able to love on my children and show them the same kindness she had shown me.

Nettie passed away on July 1, 2007, but her legacy did not end that day.

Her influence is etched into who I am. Many years later, in 2025, I dedicated my doctoral dissertation to her. This was more than a gesture of recognition; her strength remains with me. She showed me how to rise with purpose, endure storms, and keep faith.

For North Greenville University, Nettie Onell Burnette represents the foundation of a mission centered on service and sharing God’s love. For me, she is the reason I truly understand what it means to live out that mission.

Her story reminds me that influence does not have to be loud to be powerful. It can live in quiet acts of love or in consistency. It grows in showing up day after day. It lives in the people we shape without even realizing it.

She was devoted to her country and community, her calling, her family, and her faith.

And because of that, her legacy lives on.

04/24/2026

Alumni, we hope you're joining us at the Spartanburgers game tonight!

Here's an NG baseball game from nearly 70 years ago.

04/16/2026

Congratulations to NGU's Aurora Agency! The Aurora Agency students won an award for the amazing work they did for the NGU Historic Campus Tour this past Homecoming. It was well deserved!

Students from North Greenville University’s College of Communication and Fine Arts received the SCPRSA Mercury Award on Wednesday, April 15 in Columbia, SC, for their work in the Aurora Agency. Read more: https://www.ngu.edu/ngu-communication-students-receive-scprsa-mercury-award/

04/09/2026

The First Valedictorian of North Greenville Junior College: John Daniel Carter, Jr.

John Daniel Carter, Jr. was born on January 18, 1917, in Columbia, South Carolina, to John David Carter, Sr., and Estelle Powell Tison Carter. His father worked in sales and insurance, while his mother was an educator and a 1908 graduate of Greenville Women’s College (now part of Furman University). During John’s infancy, the family relocated to Jasper County, South Carolina, and later settled in Beaufort County.

Raised in a faith-centered home, John was active in his church and participated in the Boy Scouts. As a young man, he developed a wide range of interests, including woodworking, sailing, featherweight boxing, and repairing radios. He graduated from Beaufort High School in 1932 and, two years later, enrolled at North Greenville Junior College and Baptist Academy as a member of its inaugural college class. An outstanding student, he became the institution’s first college valedictorian upon graduating in 1936. He was subsequently awarded a scholarship to Furman University, where he earned his bachelor’s degree in 1938. His classmates noted his remarkable ability to read French fluently, a skill he attributed to his studies at North Greenville.

Following college, John began working for Duke Power Company while also enrolling in the Furman–CAA Secondary Civilian Pilot Training Program. In early 1941, he was accepted into the Naval Aviation Cadet Training School in Pensacola, Florida. During his training, he met Constance Daniels, whom he married later that year. Upon completing his training, John was assigned to an inshore patrol squadron at Floyd Bennett Field in New York, where he served for fourteen months.

Throughout much of the United States’ involvement in World War II, John flew with an anti-submarine patrol squadron in both the Atlantic and Pacific theaters. For his service, he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, the Air Medal, and a Gold Star in recognition of his attack on enemy midget submarines and his meritorious achievement in aerial flight operations in the Southwest Pacific. He continued his naval career after the war as a lieutenant commander, serving with the Naval Air Training Command in Pensacola. In 1947, he was assigned to Naval Air Station Argentia in Newfoundland.

With the onset of the Korean War, John served on the staff of Commander Carrier Division 5, which operated aboard the USS Yorktown, USS Oriskany, and USS Wasp. At the conclusion of the conflict, he was promoted to commander. In 1955, he returned to Pensacola with the Naval Air Training Command. Prior to his retirement from military service in 1960, he also served as Operations Officer and Navigator aboard the USS Orcacas, completed a tour of duty in Washington, D.C., and further distinguished himself through his service. In May 1960, he returned to North Greenville Junior College to deliver the commencement address.

After retiring, John and his family settled in Pensacola Beach, Florida, where he remained for the rest of his life. He continued to enjoy woodworking and gardening and played an active role in his community as a charter member and the first chief of the Pensacola Beach Volunteer Fire Department. His first wife, Constance, passed away in 1974; together they had four daughters and one son. In 1976, he married Gloria Nall, gaining two stepdaughters.

John Daniel Carter, Jr. passed away on June 25, 1991, and was laid to rest at Barrancas National Cemetery in Pensacola, Florida.

03/30/2026

From the Foothills to Japan: The Life, Love, and Service of Marion Moorhead and Thelma Chandler

Marion Moorhead and Thelma Chandler spent a lifetime together, but their early lives could not have been more different. Marion Frances Moorhead was born on April 23, 1917, in Easley, South Carolina, to parents Walter Lewis Moorhead and Mary Sue Floyd Moorhead. He was the youngest of ten children, but three of his siblings died as infants. Walter Moorhead was a baggage master for the railways, and Mary was a homemaker.

Marion, it seems, had a good childhood in a stable home. He became a Christian as a teenager and a few days later entered North Greenville Baptist Academy to finish high school. In 1934, the same year he graduated from high school at North Greenville, the school expanded into a junior college. Marion enrolled as one of the first North Greenville Junior College students that fall.

Rosa Thelma Chandler was born on January 11, 1917, in Hopewell, Virginia, to parents Thomas Jefferson "Jeff" Chandler and Theodus Bramlett Chandler. Thelma had one older brother, and her father was a carpenter. Jeff and Theodus were from the upstate of South Carolina, but had moved to Virginia for two years so Jeff could find work. They moved back to the Greenville area when Thelma was a baby. Their marriage was very turbulent, and Theodus eventually left her husband out of fear for her life. She took her kids and moved in with her mother, Rosie Bramlett, who lived in an apartment over Cox's Grocery Store on the corner of Buncombe Street and Echols Street in Greenville.

According to family members, Jeff had threatened Theodus's life on several occasions. He had also complained to a police officer that the problem in his marriage was "too much mother-in-law". Eventually, Theodus reported Jeff's threats to the police and asked for a peace warrant to be issued for her protection. A warrant was issued by the magistrate, but Jeff was not arrested. The deputy sheriff later claimed that the warrant was not legal and that Theodus had told officers she did not want her husband arrested.

On the afternoon of February 25, 1922, Theodus and Rosie went to the movie theater and returned home. Jeff came to their apartment to confront Theodus after seeing a young man flirting with her at the theater. Also in the home at the time were four-year-old Thelma, her six-year-old brother, Douglas, her aunt, her 13-year-old cousin, Louie, and Louie's 2-year-old sister. Louie later testified at the trial that he was in the room with his mother, Jeff, Theodus, and his little sister when Jeff and Theodus were arguing. He stated that Rosie was in the kitchen, Douglas was downstairs playing, and that Thelma was in the hallway outside of the room at the time. He said his Uncle Jeff sat down a few feet from his Aunt Theodus, and the two argued about the events at the theater. Jeff accused Theodus of letting a man flirt with her, and she denied noticing a man flirting with her. After about fifteen minutes of arguing, Jeff stood up like he was going to get a handkerchief out of his back pocket, but pulled out a gun and shot Theodus. By that time, Thelma and Rosie had come into the room. Jeff then turned and shot Rosie. Rosie and Theodus died almost instantly. Thelma ran to her mother and tried to wake her, crying, "Mother! Mother!", but received no response. Jeff went into the hallway and tried to get Thelma to follow him, but she refused.

Jeff did not try to run and confessed to shooting his wife and mother-in-law right away. When he was told both women were dead, he wept uncontrollably and begged to see his children. He claimed insanity as his defense, and some of his family members testified that they had a family history of mental illness. They also claimed that Jeff had been acting differently in the months leading up to the murders. The insanity defense did not work at trial, and the jury took only seventeen minutes to reach a verdict. When Jeff was found guilty and sentenced to death by the electric chair, his only visible reaction was to smile for the first time since the trial began. While in jail, Jeff became a Christian and was baptized by Rev. J. Dean Crain just days before his death. After a failed appeal, he was executed on February 1, 1924.

Thelma and Douglas were sent to the Connie Maxwell Children's Home in Greenwood, South Carolina, in 1924. Thelma remained at Connie Maxwell for about seven years before going to live with a family member in Baltimore, MD. While at Connie Maxwell, she loved to roller-skate on the highway outside the Children's Home and later said, "It was against the law, but mighty fine skating." Thelma kept close ties to Connie Maxwell Children's Home for the rest of her life. In 1955, the children's home named a building the White-Moorhead Cottage after Thelma and another alumna of the home. Thelma also received an award from them in 1959.

Thelma enrolled at North Greenville Junior College as a freshman in 1935. It was at North Greenville that Marion and Thelma met and fell in love. Marion later wrote to North Greenville English professor, Jean Martin Flynn, that he and Thelma knew almost from their first meeting that it seemed to be revealed that they would serve together in God's work. God had put Japan on Marion's heart during a missions class, and on their first date, he and Thelma discussed their mutual interest in mission work in Japan.

Marion and Thelma were very involved in campus life at North Greenville. They both participated in plays, debates, and literary societies. Marion was the editor-in-chief of the first Aurora yearbook and one of the first six graduates of North Greenville Junior College in 1936. Thelma was the valedictorian of her class when she graduated in 1937.

After leaving North Greenville, Thelma and Marion went to different schools to earn bachelor's degrees. Marion attended Furman University, and Thelma attended Winthrop. Marion graduated from Furman in 1938 and moved to Texas to attend the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. He returned home to South Carolina after a year at seminary. Thelma had graduated from Winthrop in 1939, and the couple became engaged in early 1940. They were wed in the chapel at Connie Maxwell Children's Home on June 15, 1940. The following year, the Moorheads enrolled together at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, where Thelma earned a Master's in Religious Education, and Marion earned a Master's in Theology. Marion graduated a year before Thelma and worked as the Baptist Student Union Secretary at the University of Oklahoma while Thelma finished her degree.

World War II was still raging during this time, so Marion enlisted in the Navy as a chaplain in 1944. He served in this role until 1946, and while he was deployed, Thelma worked as the educational director at the First Baptist Church in Spartanburg. By this time, they were both finished with their graduate degrees and ready to pursue a life of mission work in Japan through the Southern Baptist Convention's Foreign Mission Board (today's International Mission Board). To prepare for this, they spent a year at the University of Southern California at Berkley studying the Japanese language and culture.

The Moorheads and their two young sons, Michael and Douglas, set sail for Japan on December 14, 1948, and spent Christmas at sea that year. Their first role in Japan was teaching at the Seinan Gaukin high school for boys in Fukuoka on the island of Kyushu. While teaching at the school, the Moorheads also did evangelical work and welcomed their only daughter into the world in 1950. In 1952, they began the first Baptist church in Sapporo, Hokkaido, in their home with another missionary and a Japanese couple. After six years, the Moorheads moved to a different city where Marion was the director of religious activities at a Baptist school and the associate pastor of Mt. Zion Baptist Church. Thelma taught school and assisted with religious education at their church.

Marion became the pastor of Tokyo Baptist Church in 1963. Tokyo Baptist Church was an English-speaking church with the primary purpose of serving the military, businessmen, and diplomatic corps who came to Tokyo. Marion preached two sermons each Sunday at the church, and one sermon was conducted in English while the other was done in Japanese. While they were serving in Tokyo, Thelma worked as the Education Director at Tokyo Baptist Church and then taught at the Kohura International School.

The Moorheads served as missionaries in Japan for 36 years. When they took furloughs back home to South Carolina, they spent much of their time speaking at churches and events. During one of their furloughs, they had over 600 speaking engagements over the course of a year. When the Moorheads retired in 1982, their children were scattered across the United States. When their kids suggested that they settle near one of them, Marion responded, "Can you see the Blue Ridge Mountains from your area? 'Cuse me, I want to live out my years where I can see the Blue Ridge Mountains." The Moorheads settled in Easley, South Carolina, where Marion had always considered home to be.

The Moorheads did not slow down much in retirement. They were both heavily involved in North Greenville alumni activities, and Marion served as a trustee of North Greenville College and received an honorary Doctor of Divinity degree from North Greenville in 1996. Marion also served on the Pickens County Board of Habitat for Humanity and on the Foster Care Review Board of Judicial District 13-A. Thelma stayed involved with Connie Maxwell Children's Home. She also served as a Sunday School teacher at First Baptist Church of Easley and a one-term Church Moderator. She was the first woman invited to speak to the Hayama Japan Pastor's Conference and to the South Carolina Southern Baptist Convention in Columbia, SC.

Marion passed away on March 3, 1998, and Thelma passed away on January 13, 2014. They are buried together at Graceland West Cemetery in Greenville, South Carolina. Their lives were a testament to resilience, devotion, and the long reach of a shared calling that carried them from small Southern towns to the schools and sanctuaries of Japan.