Currie Haynes
by Hoyt Oliver
Currie Haynes
When I was a student at Emory at Oxford from 1952 to 1954, biology professor Currie Haynes had a quaint custom. The day before he was going to give a pop quiz, somewhere about the campus he would hide a stuffed blue jay. If students suspected a quiz, found the bird, and produced it in class, the quiz would be called off. So we all called pop quizzes “blue jays.”
After Mr. Haynes retired, he devoted his time to caring for plantings on the campus – shrubs, flowers, and trees, including those given in honor of various faculty and staff members. He single-handedly created the Hearn Nature Trail through the college forest – building bridges, clearing a trail, and identifying many native trees, vines, and shrubs with numbered posts. When Dr. Homer Sharp had to go into the hospital, Mr. Haynes was asked to come in and cover his classes. One of the biology students wrote home to his parents, “You just won’t believe this college – my biology teacher got sick and the yard man came in to teach us!”
After Mr. Haynes retired, he devoted his time to caring for plantings on the campus – shrubs, flowers, and trees, including those given in honor of various faculty and staff members. He single-handedly created the Hearn Nature Trail through the college forest – building bridges, clearing a trail, and identifying many native trees, vines, and shrubs with numbered posts. When Dr. Homer Sharp had to go into the hospital, Mr. Haynes was asked to come in and cover his classes. One of the biology students wrote home to his parents, “You just won’t believe this college – my biology teacher got sick and the yard man came in to teach us!”