Disciples Divinity House

The creation of a new fund celebrated Dolores Highbaugh's 95th birthday and honors Richard and Dolores Highbaugh. They are deeply Disciples, and that includes their decades-long relation to DDH.

Highbaugh ancestors were almost certainly present at Cane Ridge, one of the birthplaces of the Disciples movement. Richard Highbaugh’s great grandfather Scipio was born into slavery in Kentucky; by 1900, he brought his family to Indiana, where they bought land and homes. Richard was born in 1920 in Irvington, Indiana, which began as a separately incorporated township five miles east of Indianapolis. The campus of what became Butler University was located there, and the Christian Women’s Board of Missions built its College of Missions on the campus. In 1928, the “Missions Building” on Downey Avenue became the offices of the United Christian Missionary Society, and it served as the denomination’s headquarters until 1996. There were five or six households of the Highbaugh and Brown families in Irvington, and they were the only Black family who lived in the area until the early 1980s. Richard’s first job was to assist his uncle, who was the weekend custodian in the Missions Building, by switching off the lights in the evenings. In the thirties, Black employees were not allowed to eat in the building even if they were the cooks, so, an aunt operated a tea room across the street where they could have lunch and take breaks.

There is a story about Richard initially not being admitted to the neighborhood elementary school. His mother protested the exclusion of Black children, and she risked danger by sitting on the steps of the school for a week so that her son could attend the school that he could walk to from home. Richard became a Tuskegee Airman in 1943, with his younger brother Earl following the next year; Earl died in active service in Italy. Richard attended Amherst College, where he was one of three Black men in the student body, and then the University of Chicago for his MBA.

Dolores Jones’s family had migrated from Jackson, Mississippi, first to Detroit, and then to Chicago. In 1947, during Richard’s business school days, he and Dolores were introduced by two mutual friends who were Airmen. They were married in Chicago in 1949. Richard's mother, Margrave Castleman, directed them to the church on the southside that would soon become Park Manor Christian Church. Margrave herself was an active leader in the Second Christian Church in Indianapolis under the leadership of Rev. R.H. Peoples.

At Park Manor, Richard was an elder and taught the Bible class for twenty years. He organized the first little league team in the city under the auspices of the church; it became part of the city’s program. He started and ran the credit union in the church, a necessity when Black individuals were not welcome in the local banks, and the Cub Scout and Boy Scout troops, which offered an active community organization for boys from the neighborhood. Dolores Highbaugh was also an elder and tireless in her work at Park Manor for fifty years. She gave important leadership in the Chicago Disciples Union including brave, transformative interracial initiatives; she worked with Disciples Women in the regional and general church, often breaking the color line alongside Sybel Thomas and Eddie Griffin. Her keen insight was sought in ecumenical venues and committees, where she was typically the sole lay woman among white male theologians and clergy. She served on the 1975-77 moderator team of the General Assembly of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). In those years, and because Dolores insisted, Richard accompanied her to General Assemblies and got involved on the credentials committee. His presence at the assemblies encouraged the denomination to secure appropriate facilities for persons who were disabled. He was the only person in a wheelchair at the General Assembly in Kentucky in 1971; by his last assembly in the 1990s, there were wheelchair accommodations and assistance. Richard Highbaugh died in 2006.

It was during the 1978 General Board meeting in Chicago that their daughter Claudia became the first Black woman ordained to the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), that is, the first ordained after the 1968 Restructure and Merger. Rev. Dr. Claudia Highbaugh has been a trustee of the Disciples Divinity House since 1999, and has served in higher and theological education at Yale University, Harvard Divinity School, and Connecticut College, as a trustee emerita and visiting professor at Ursinus College, and as a trustee of her alma mater, Hiram College. The Highbaughs were proud that their children, Claudia and Burton, were graduates of the University’s Laboratory Schools. “My parents considered both a life of faith and a first-rate education to be consistent goals for their lives and for the many young people with whom they created relationships,” Claudia said.

This new fund especially celebrates Dolores Highbaugh’s pedagogical and intellectual role at DDH. She regularly attended programs and Monday dinners, and always has challenging questions for House Scholars (and the dean) as she nudges them to be educators for all people in the churches. Created with initial gifts of $10,000, the Richard and Dolores Highbaugh Fund ensures that their profound example, commitment, and challenge are sounded for future generations of learners and leaders.