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James
Parks Caldwell, born in Monroe, Ohio, was
just 14 years old when he helped launch
Sigma Chi. By the time he was 13, his
progress through courses, including Latin
and advanced math, caused the principal
of the local academy to remark that the
boy had covered everything that could be
offered there, and he entered Miami
University apparently with advanced
credits.
Caldwell is best remembered for his
spirit of youth and for bringing an
element of creative genius. According to
Runkle, Jimmie Caldwell was born with a
wonderful brain and a strangely sensitive
and delicate organiz ation. He was from
his childhood one of the most lovable of
God’s creations. Strong men who have
become hardened to tender feeling and
sympathetic sentiment, remember and love
him . Somehow, he seemed closely akin to
all of us. I roomed and cared for him for
more than a year. Our holidays were spent
in the fields and along the streams, one
of us carrying a gun , or fishing rod,
but Caldwell his copy of Poe or his
Shakespeare. His contributions, essays,
poems, plays, and stories read in the
literary hall, in the chapter meetings,
and on Saturdays before the whole corps
of students, were the most remarkable
productions that I ever heard. Few of us
escaped the pointed witticisms that
flowed from his pen, or ever lost the
nicknames that he gave us in his dramas.
He never seemed to study as other boys.
What he knew appeared to be his
intuitively. He wrote Latin and Greek
poetry, and he was more widely versed in
literature, and more accurate in his
knowledge, than any other student in the
college. He left the university with the
respect and the whole hearted affection
of every soul from president to janitor.
He graduated Miami University soon after
his sixteenth birthday. Following college
he practiced law in Ohio, and began a
career as an educator in Mississippi . He
enlisted in the Confederate army, and
during the Civil War, he was captured and
taken prisoner. He rejected an offer of
freedom on condition that he renounce
allegiance to the Confederacy, even
though it came from a northern soldier
who loved him as a brother. Following the
war, he returned to Mississippi and was
admitted to the Bar. Being a bachelor, he
traveled frequently, writing as a
journalist and practicing law. His death
came in 1912, at Biloxi, where in his
room were found the latest issues of The
Sigma Chi Quarterly. He is buried in
Biloxi Cemetery.
Related links:
Isaac M. Jordan
Benjamin Piatt
Runkle
Franklin Howard Scobey
Thomas Cowan Bell
Daniel William Cooper
William Lewis
Lockwood
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