October 2, 2026
Former Georgia Tech coach W.A. Alexander, reflecting on his days as a player in the early 1900s, said the “the meanest and toughest guy I ever ran across on a gridiron was a fellow by the name of Grice, who is now a Baptist preacher.”
“Every time I snapped the ball, this Baptist preacher-to-be would come charging in and hit me like a ton of bricks, growling imprecations as he did so,” Alexander said in the book Gridiron Glory Days. “I would be hurled back at such speed that I often arrived in the quarterback’s arms shortly after the ball got there.”
Homer Grice’s nickname recorded in the 1912 Mercer yearbook was “Colossus,” which was fitting in more ways than one when applied to the life of Homer Lamar Grice (1883-1974). He was a physically big man, playing defensive center for Mercer University. He was tall and earned his reputation by overwhelming the competition on the gridiron. He was named to the “All Georgia Team,” and second team all-Southern.
In 1911 after a close game, the coaching staff of the University of Georgia accused Grice, also known as Mercer’s “bad boy,” of being a “ringer,” someone paid to play college football. It further leveled other accusations of cheating against the team. Mercer’s football coach responded in a newspaper column in the Athens’s paper the following week that Grice had entered Mercer to study for the ministry, that he was president of the Campus YMCA, that the day following the game in Athens the previous year, and that Grice had been a guest speaker at First Baptist Church of Athens.
Homer Grice earned many titles in his lifetime. He was a railroad man, a football letterman, class poet and historian, champion debater, “Bad Boy,” ringer, “Colossus,” college professor, preacher and “the meanest and toughest guy I ever ran across on the gridiron.”
In Southern Baptist circles, he would be best remembered as the father of Vacation Bible School.
There are several origin stories of VBS dating to the late 19th Century. Although the one which gave birth to an organized movement began at a Baptist Church in New York in 1898. It was designed to provide children, primarily in urban settings, Bible instruction during summer school breaks. Within a few years, an interdenominational organization was developed.
“In 1923, the Sunday School Board began featuring Vacation School in The Sunday School Builder. In the spring of 1923, Mr. Harold E. Ingraham, of the Department of Sunday School Administration, became responsible for the Vacation school. He published two pamphlets and began promoting the work. The same year, the Sunday School Board published a booklet by Rev. R. E. F. Aler, of Maryland, on the "Vacation Bible School."
In 1922, according to Baptist historian Leon MacBeth, Grice had been reading about the success of Daily Vacation Bible Schools being conducted by the Presbyterians. He decided to organize a VBS at his church, the First Baptist Church of Washington, Georgia. It is believed to be the first Baptist VBS south of Maryland. It was a small but significant beginning of Southern Baptist VBS ministry.
The first school ran for four weeks with three hours of class each day, a total of 60 hours of instruction. The curriculum included Bible, citizenship, crafts, music and recreation with the purpose to: “give them a daily three-hour program of teaching that will minister to their physical, mental, social, moral and spiritual needs.” (1925 SBC Annual)
Grice who had taught college English for two years and his wife Ethel, a former schoolteacher applied their life skills and experience to organize and promote these early VBS’s in Washington, Georgia. In 1923 he began speaking about the needs of this type of ministry across the south. In the fall of 1924, he was invited to become the first Department Director of the newly created DVBS (at that time called Daily Vacation Bible School) Department of the Sunday School Board. A part of his job was to provide the organization and promotion of this ministry.
In the fall he wrote “How to Have a Daily Vacation Bible School,” a 30-page book distributed across the convention. He also oversaw the development of the first VBS curriculum. His wife Ethel wrote two of the four age division books of the first DVBS curriculum introduced in 1925. Furthermore, he reported in the 1925 SBC Annual, having spent 175 days on the road promoting and conducting training in all the southern states having traveled over 25,000 miles. In early 1926 his book, “The Daily Vacation Bible School Guide,” which was over 300 pages long, was published giving detailed instructions in how to organize and conduct a DVBS.
In his 1926 report in the SBC Annual, he stated that over 400 churches had provided schools in 1925 across the south. The schools, which were primarily in urban areas, continued to grow, despite the growing difficult economic situation across the southern states. driven by the boil weevil and successive years of draught. In Georgia, which was the first to assign responsibility to one of the State Sunday School workers to promote VBS in 1924, the number of schools dropped from 73 in 1925 to 44 in 1926, but south wide the number continued to grow. The Georgia Baptist State Sunday School worker was James W. Merritt who became Executive Director of the State Mission Board in 1930.
Grice and his wife Ethel were trailblazers. He had taken a long route to the ministry, working as a Railroad postal clerk on trains between Atlanta and Birmingham, Alabama for seven years, saving to pay for his education. When he enrolled at Mercer he had never played football and became one of their star players in the history of the school. Finishing college at age 29 in 1912, at age 30 he married Ethel Harrison, a 32-year-old schoolteacher from Birmingham, Alabama. They moved to Arkansaw where he taught English for two years at Ouachita Baptist College before accepting the call to become the pastor of FBC Washington, Georgia in 1915. He was noted for being an energetic and progressive pastor. This included drawing the ire of some across the state for advocating African American civil rights. Then he became the first Department Director of the Vacation Bible School Department of the Sunday School Board.
Homer Grice would continue to direct the Department of Daily Vacation Bible Schools until his retirement in 1953. He was a colossus, a giant and his life has cast a giant shadow across Southern Baptist life. Thousands of children have come to Christ as a result of VBS. It is one of the most effective evangelistic tools in SBC churches. Yet, there is an irony to his life and ministry. He and Ethel loved children and devoted their life and ministry to them, and yet they never had any children of their own. Although he was a father, the father of Southern Baptists VBS.
In this centennial year of SBC support of Vacation Bible Schools, thousands of those saved through ministry of VBS over the last century could speak, it would be to say, thank you Homer Grice for helping me find Jesus.
Share with others
