Anderson College News: Jubilee Issue
“1917-1967: Anderson College’s First Half-Century” by Robert H. Reardon
Eric Sevareid, one of the nation’s leading newsmen, wrote recently that part of the
dissatisfaction of young people is that they see only from where they now are—to
the ideal society, but that age has the perspective of the past—what it was—to the
present and the advantage of side-vision, the capacity to compare with other
peoples in other places. I want to write a few words about the past 50 years with the
hope that all of us—both young and old—who love Anderson College will be able to
view the past with understanding and to see the problems and opportunities of the
present in perspective.
From the beginning, when classes opened in October, 1917, until the present
time, the story of the College has been full of adventure and drama. It began as did
so many of the nation’s colleges and universities—not to furnish the student with a
liberal education but to give training in subjects necessary for church work. Our first
students thought of themselves primarily as “gospel workers” and, as members of
the “Trumpet Family,” they worked without pay at the Gospel Trumpet Company
across the street to carry the printed word of the Church of God Reformation to the
ends of the earth. They wanted to be trained to do this more effectively.
Just as the law of life is to change for human beings, so it is for institutions. By
their very nature colleges effect great changes in society and are in turn greatly
affected by society. So it has been with Anderson College and the Christian
Community that gave it birth.
Acceptance of the “training school” within the Church was tentative and slow.
Though D. S. Warner and Enoch Byrum each had college training, most of the
leadership in the Church came as they often put it “from the school of hard knocks.”
The colleges and seminaries of the day were looked on as part of the corrupt
religious establishment having strayed far from the “faith once delivered to the
Saints.” Consequently, efforts were made to stay clear of such traditional terms as
“school,” “college,” “professor” and degrees were though of as emblems of self
seeking and worldly sophistication. Also, from the first, there was some
considerable fear among the older ministers that the young men, trained at
Anderson, might replace them. One needs for the sake of perspective to realize that
at the time Anderson College was born, one could count on the fingers of one hand
the pastors who had college degrees. One was Anderson Brown, brother of our
beloved C. E. Brown, who had received a Bachelor of Oratory.
Such was the climate in which Anderson College began. Few thought that the
infant would, or ought, to survive but half a century has proved them mistaken and
under the providential hand of God Anderson College has been more productive for
the church which gave her birth than anyone then imagined.
During the past 50 years the College has traveled a hazardous and difficult
road. Looking back there seem to be seven major turning points in the life of the
college which are worthy of thought. Some were quiet and gradual, others fraught
with controversy, but all were of major importance.
1. The War Years, 1917-18. After the first year of operation many of the young
men marched off to “make the world safe for democracy.” Classes were down in
number and the prospects were full of gloom. In addition, considerable deficits had
accumulated and some thought the new venture to be a serious financial threat to
the Gospel Trumpet Company. The determination of J. T. Wilson and teachers such
as R. R. and Bessie Byrum kept the school alive although it hung by a slender thread.
2. The Coming of Morrison and Olt. Dr. Morrison showed me on several
occasions the letter which cam from J. T. Wilson inviting him to come to Anderson.
Destiny was in that invitation, for it that invitation had been extended to someone of
lesser human endowments the whole story would be different. Soon after he was
elected principal, John Morrison brought Dean Russell Olt to the College. The
devotion to Anderson College by these two men, each with his own great gifts of
mind and spirit, brought sterling leadership to the school during its most critical
years. Together they gave more than 70 years to the college and as long as Anderson
College stands it will be a monument to them.
3. The Introduction of the Liberal Arts Curriculum in 1928. The decision to
introduce the classic liberal arts curriculum represents one of the major
institutional turning points. It was at this juncture that the College decided to
indentify its programs not only with the study of the Bible, but also with the entire
spectrum of man’s knowledge. This monumental decision spared the Church from
becoming cultish and ingrown and threw open all the historic windows of learning.
This bridge into the world opened the College to a completely new set of
relationships with government, industry, public education, medicine, and science
and brought about a fruitful exposure of students to a world hitherto denied them.
The stakes were driven down in 1928 in spite of considerable internal dissension
and from this time on it was determined that Anderson College was to be a college
in the fullest sense of the term.
4. The Power Struggle of 1932. By 1932 a major storm had gathered with its
center in Ohio, and it threatened to devastate the liberal arts program initiated by
Morrison and Olt. A graphic account is given in Morrison’s book, As the River Flows.
The Church stood with the leaders of the College by the slimmest margin. But the
dust finally settles and the program went on in spite of the fact that a significant
portion of the Church was alienated. Nearly 20 years passed before this rift was
healed.
5. Drive for Accreditation, 1940-45. Dean Olt was a legend even in the
Twenties. He was a saint, academic tyrant, man of inflexible integrity and was
believed by some students to be endowed with supernatural powers of insight.
When he decided that Anderson College should be fully accredited by the North
Central Association, he began to move toward this goal with uncompromising
energy and determination. This meant bringing the College program up to standard
in the ten major areas in which norms had been established. This was no small task.
Dr. Dale Russell, perhaps the leading figure in the Midwest on academic affairs, came
to the campus to do a survey and decide what needed to be done. Virtually
everything was the answer. However, Dean Olt took the blueprint and began one of
the miracles in higher education in Indiana. His work was rewarded in 1946 when
Anderson College took its place as a fully accredited institution. Its credits were now
recognized. Students could be sure of entrance into the graduate schools and a
whole new world of opportunity opened. Without this launching pad Anderson
College could never have grown to the institution it is today. Each day that goes by
our thanks ought to go to Dean Russell Olt, the man who made a degree from
Anderson College mean something.
6. Community Acceptance, 1957. The relationship of the College and the City
of Anderson was conditioned largely by the mutual hostility that prevailed,
beginning in 1906 when the church community moved to town. We associated the
town with the world, the flesh and the devil. The town thought of us as religious
fanatics. After the College was organized, and even after it became accredited, there
remained a considerable amount of misunderstanding. Linfield Myers, President of
the Anderson Bank and long-time friend of the College, did more than any other
person in the town to bring about a change. It was his long friendship with the
Charles E. Wilsons that brought the College Community and the town together in a
successful library-building project. When Mr. Wilson, then secretary of defense in
the Eisenhower Cabinet, came to Anderson with his entire family to speak at the
dedication of the new Library it was evident that Anderson College had entered a
whole new era in establishing a good relationship in its own community. Since that
time the friendship between the College and Town has deepened and grown.
7. 1958—Year of Transition. In June of 1958 Dr. Morrison retired after 39
years of outstanding leadership. Not only did the college need to adjust to a new
president but soon to a new dean, registrar, librarian, alumni director, dean of
students, seminary dean and the vacancies left by such great faculty personalities as
Dr. Kardatzke, Dr. Koglin, Ruthven Byrum, Dr. Hartselle, Prof. Haldeman and other
highly significant people. Yet in the providence of God we have been most fortunate.
A new generation of teachers and administrators has risen up. They are now
seasoned and highly productive people. The brilliant and dedicated leadership that
they are bringing to Anderson College today is responsible for the exciting progress
and development which the institution now enjoys as it begins its second halfcentury.
“It’s Not Far” by Kenneth F. Hall
1917-1927: The Pioneering Years
It’s not far from Olt student center to Old Main. Just a few steps. But in another sense
it’s a long way, because you have to walk past five or six million dollars worth of
new buildings, past nearly ten thousand persons who have studied here, past the
dedicated careers of scores of faculty members, past twenty thousand club meetings
and chapel services and plays and choir concerts, past the ebb and flow of fifty years
of history.
When you take this walk, at least you come to the Gospel Trumpet workers’
home on October 2, 1917. A recent reorganization of the publishing work has
caused several things to happen. The workers have been put on an allowance
system for the first time and many with families are moving out of the eleven-yearold building into their own homes in Park Place. And the Gospel Trumpet Company
has gone into the school business. J. T. Wilson, the company’s president, has been
put in charge of the school department, and has recruited four others to teach along
with him—Russell R. Byrum and his wife Bessie, J. W. Phelps, and Henry C. Clausen.
Students hoping to attend classes won’t have to worry about several things.
Admission is no problem. An eighth grade education is good enough. Tuition is no
problem if they are gospel workers. Others will pay $3.00 per course. The rooms will
cost $1.50 to $2.00 a week and food will run $3.00 per week. In fact they may enter
school at any time, although beginning with the October term is recommended.
There will be no distraction from local saloons. These have all been closed in
a state prohibition law, and even now the national Congress is debating an
amendment to the Constitution that would bring in Prohibition. The war in Europe
does hover like a dark cloud over the 30,000 people of Anderson and the little
Church of God community on its eastern edge. America had been in the war for six
months and conscription has been under way since June. The American
Expeditionary Forces had landed in France in June and here in the fall were
encountering hard going. In Russia Lenin and his friends were nearing success in
their efforts to overthrow the provisional government.
Of course, not all was easy for students even in those days. The morning
started off with compulsory chapel at 6:20. There was always preparation to do for
classes like Russell Byrum’s “Heresies and How to Combat Them” or J. T. Wilson’s
“Laws of Teaching as Applied to Preaching and Sunday School Work.” There were
special lectures to attend like F. G. Smith’s “Punctuality and Persistent Effort.”
Despite a precarious financial start Anderson Bible Training School survived
its first year and moved into its second with a small increase in enrollment. Students
apparently thrived under regulations that said, “The wearing of gold or other
jewelry for ornamental purposes is forbidden.” They survived the school’s sick care
program that charged $5.00 a week for attention that included “the administration
of no medicine but did call for the offering of prayer.”
The first graduating class from the two-year curse in 1919 included people
like J. Frank Shaw, who gave his life to home missions work among the Indians of
the northwest; Anna Koglin, longtime teacher of German and Greek at the college;
Fred Blore, of Belfast, Ireland; Louise Frederici, who became an assistant editor of
the Gospel trumpet in Germany; Dorothy Griffin Timmons, who became the wife of a
faculty member at the University of Illinois and was very active in juvenile work;
Stella Weigle, Jacob Horne, Edith Bleiler and others. Pioneers all!
Alumni seem to have a hankering to organize, and by 1921 Anderson College
alumni had. The first alumni meeting traces back to June 15, that year, and by 1923
the college had an alumna of faculty. Anna Koglin, credited with a working
knowledge of English, German, Swedish, Norwegian, Russian, Greek was on the
staff—probably teaching math.
That same year we notice a number of interesting features on campus. The
size of the library had mounted to 1,500 volumes. Chapel had been moved to a more
spiritual 8 a.m. Students were required to buy a sixty-watt bulb for their room for
forty cents, that amount being refundable at the end of the year. Only sixty-watt
bulbs would do; no forty-watt or hundred-watt bulbs could be snatched from
elsewhere around the campus. And every student was required to give Monday
forenoons to work around the school unless he was excused through the payment of
a special fee.
A young man named Morrison had joined the staff by this time and in 1923
he became principal. Another young man by the name of Steele Smith was listed in
the college catalog that year as director of gymnasium for men. Actually, an hour of
physical culture was required of each student for one period daily.
Even without saloons in Anderson and on the hold ground east of Union
Avenue, the place had not yet become heaven. Prospective students were wanted:
“Extremism and fanaticism are not countenanced… Students are warned not to
come to the School expecting to find freedom from temptation.”
By 1925 Anderson Bible School and Seminary had been set up as a separate
institution with John Morrison as its first president. It began offering a B.Th. degree
and annual tuition went to fifty dollars. That year a middle-aged missionary from
India by the name of E. Stanley Jones made a visit to the campus. He has been back
since.
Social life moved along a brilliant pace. Already the school was developing its
well-deserved reputation as a marriage bureau, but the regulations did their best to
slow things down: “Boys and girls are not allowed to accompany each other in
public without special consent. On such occasions students may be asked to be
chaperoned.” What was to happen when not in public was not specified.
By the end of the decade enrollment had edged its way to 213 and costs for
living on campus and going to school had reached $326.50. The school was in 1927
giving its first honorary degrees—D.D.’s to F. G. Smith and H. M. Riggle and it was,
despite considerable debate in the field, preparing to launch itself as a full-scale
liberal arts college.
1928-1937: The Lean Years
How far is it from Old Student Center to Old Main? Only a few steps, but it is a walk
that stretched from the wealth and affluence of American in 1967 to the poverty, to
the depressions to the W.P.A. It is a walk from steak to cabbage, from Cadillac to
Model T, from the gleaming kitchens of Old Student Center to the dusty closets of
Old Main.
This decade stated off with the launching the of the liberal arts program
under the guidance of Dean Russell Olt. By June, 1929, the General Ministerial
Assembly had approved the reorganization of the school under the name of
Anderson College and Theological Seminary, and that year’s student body included
58 liberal arts students. The stage was set for the college’s first large-scale financial
campaign, an endowment drive in the city and the church. $200,000 was pledged
early in the campaign. But over on Wall Street on October 29, 16,000,000 shares
changed hands in one day’s crash and before the end of the year, $15 billion in stock
values had been drained away. Only a quarter of that pledged $200,000 was ever
paid and twenty years would pass before the college would be able to put up its first
major building planned form the start for college use.
But life at the struggling little college moved ahead. It managed to graduate
people like Carl Kardatzke and Amy Lopez, Earl Martin, D. S. Warner Monroe and
Esther Boyer Kirkpatrick in a year like 1930.
Out of school into the depths of the depression in 1932 came the first liberal
arts graduating class. Twenty students received bachelors of arts degrees in that
year.
There were the days when tickets to the alumni banquets cost fifty cents, and
when you might as in 1928 expect anything on the program—even a marriage.
There were the years when the college began to get involved in
intercollegiate athletics. In 1934 George D. Montague was listed as director of
athletics and was coach of a team known as the Tigers. Somewhere along the line
that tiger lost his claws and his stripes and started growing feathers. By 1936 the
Tigers had advanced to the point where they only lost to Indiana Central, 69-10.
(Actually they had some pretty good years in those early days.) And in track Loren
Owen excelled in the hundred-yard dash.
Even though the money was tight, fundraising went on. One early Alumni
fundraising activity had Russell Keeney volunteering to make a thousand small
upholstered footstools for free, and the alumni were to sell these $5.00 stools for
$1.95. This was to go toward remodeling the old barn northeast of Old Main into a
gymnasium for the Tigers. Before the barn eventually came down someone also
dreamed of it being a music hall. That never happened either.
Student life was taking on more and more organized form. Retha Shultz sang
in the college ladies quartet along with Esther Sample Byrd, Glenyce Sayre, and
Gertie Andrews Miller. Martha Mills Phelps got involved in this quartet, too. And
clubs were coming along thick and fast, among the more permanent ones being Pep
and Booster. The Nawaka Hiking Club for women was born, although just why a
bunch of girls would want to hike out to the Devil’s backbone of Jackson’s crossing
with no men along is hard to understand.
Before we forget it these were the years when degrees came and went. An
early form of the B.D. degree was offered, and even a Bachelor of Music.
By 1937 some prosperity was creeping back into the scene. Enrollment,
which had been held down by the scarcity of funds, climbed on up, and in 1937 the
Indiana Department of Education gave the college provisional accreditation for the
training of public school teachers. The decade from 1928 to 1937 had seen much
progress, but social appointments were still arranged through the dean of women.
1938-1947: The War Years
It’s not far from Olt Student Center to Old Main, but it is a walk that takes us back
from our own troubled time to wars of other years. Old Min became a college
building in the midst of war and the fifty-year history of the college pivots on World
War II. Young men have left the halls of Old Main to become doughboys in France,
GI’s in Iwo Jima and Korea, CO’s in Civilian Public Service camps and hospitals,
Green Berets in Vietnam.
By 1938 the tryouts for World War II in Spain were almost over, and Hitler
was walking out to the wings, moving on March 11 into Austria. A little earlier the
Japanese had sunk the U.S. Gunboat Panay in the Yangtze. And on September 30
came the Munich conference where Hitler got the green light on territorial demands.
In the midst of all this confusion Douglas (Wrong Way) Corrigan flew his light plane
from Brooklyn across he Atlantic to Dublin.
There had been some modification by now in the regulations listed in the
college catalog. A key statement there by 1939 was the “The Golden Rule is applied
to the administration of discipline.” 1939 also saw the Alma Mater sung for the first
time.
By now the faculty was bulwarked with alumni names like these: Earl Martin,
Carl Kardatzke (early-bird Ph.D. on the faculty), Fred Schminke, Walter Haldeman.
Vila Deubach arrived from Colorado and found herself as dean of women clearing all
those social appointments. That same year Adaline Jesswein and Gene Newberry
were named as representative students. Representative of what we wonder now,
looking back?
In December that year alumni held what was billed as the first homecoming
(although a much smaller homecoming affair held at Shadyside Park shows up in
earlier records). A throng of two hundred persons turned out to see the Ravens
knock off Kokomo College, 36-21, in basketball. There was a debate tournament
with Butler. Foodstuffs and quilts and other furnishings poured in. Next year
“Toodles” was added to the faculty, and sometimes his growls in chapel in response
to enthusiastic singing would be heard. This was Professor Hartselle’s seeing-eye
dog. By now basketball had really arrived on campus. Behind high-scoring Jack
VanDyke the Ravens ranked third among all Indiana colleges and universities and
went to the National Association of Intercollegiate Basketball Tourney in Kansas
City. We have returned since.
Feeling that students needed more exercise, the college in 1940 moved the
library off the main floor up to the fourth, and a drive was on for five thousand new
books to try to build the school toward accreditation by the North Central
Association. With the library up there the need for a fire escape from the fourth
became more obvious. That’s when the big pipe on the north side of the building
appeared. When the college bothered to do this it must have indicated to city father
that the school was here to stay, and they renamed Union Avenue, College Drive.
That was the year Lottie Franklin edited the Echoes, and Jim Sibert served as
its business manager. In spite of this and basketball, Jim graduated.
Early in 1941 Dr. Morrison outlined a four-point set of goals: 500 students
enrolled, remove indebtedness, North Central accreditation, and a loan fund for
ministerial students. In those days the college continued to ordain many graduating
ministerial students. In June this year the group included (this bunch): Al Brown, Val
Clear, Clifford Corns, Leslie Ratzlaff, Robert Reardon and Roscoe Snowden. It’s
strange how people can come out of college, get ordained and never be heard of
again.
In the fall of 1941 the college opened for its twenty-fifth year. That was the
year when Jerry Hurst Reardon would be named “best all-around girl” (isn’t
somebody by that name just graduating?) and Jack “Pudge” VanDyke as “best allaround man.”
Meanwhile, Japan had interrupted things with that unpleasantness at Pearl
Harbor. Other alumni and students joined Jim Sibert in service. Among these,
Charley Young would become the first gold star on the honor plaque in the lobby of
Old Main. Many would enter chaplaincy. Some would go to CPS camps.
Students were working on grades all during these years. It happened that
during the first semester of 1942, typical of all students before and since, Milburn
Miller and Jim Trimble pulled down all A’s. Who’s Who had names like Milton
Beuttner, Revere Cook, Art Eikamp, Herschell Rice. Dorothy Morrison Blevins was,
believe it or not, a cheerleader.
By 1943 the art of attention-getting chapel announcements had been
perfected to a high degree. This was perhaps one of the distinctive contributions of
Anderson College students to national campus life, but these eventually reached the
point that in the interests of safety and time, and the spirit of worship, they were
abolished by administrative decree.
Remember Eastern Club? Glad Tidings Chorus? Remember the Post Office
Care, the East Side jersey Dairy Store on Central? The Alfred Turner Studios? The G.
T. Service Station? Gadberry Grocery and Lunch? Chan’s Chinese Food? Higgins and
Sons Cleaners? If you do, you’re an old-timer. In 1942-1943 the basketball team was
able to play only seven of twenty contests because of gas rationing, and the
following year’s intercollegiate schedule folded completely. War was upon us. War
brought on the accelerated program where it became possible to do a four-year
program in three. War brought on a shortage of men, even to the point where Leona
Tussey took Stanley Wolfram, then barely out of the cradle, to a Pep Club formal.
Do you remember the year June Cima Olson was May queen? Mona Morrison
Hoffman was out second one back in 1940.
By 1945 the GI’s began drifting back into school. First Lieut. Quentin
Withrow was the first of former students (he had left school in 1941) to return to
campus and to center spot on the basketball team. Then Jumpin’ Johnny Wilson
brought national attention to AC with his cage prowess—setting all kinds of records
and going on to be the school’s first pro player.
These were the days of Christian Volunteers, forerunner of the present Tri-S
program. Under joint arrangements by the college, Board of Church Extension and
Home Missions, and Board of Christian Extension and Home Missions, and Board of
Christian Education, students spent their summers in migrant work, conducting
vacation schools, working among defense plant immigrants in northern cities, and
the like.
By 1946 there were 929 students and the drive was on for full accreditation.
On March 27 President Morrison and Dean Olt called from Chicago. Anderson was
in, and the students danced—almost—in the streets.
Next day back in Anderson, the president was looking to the future. He
predicted: We will launch a graduate school of theology. We will build a chapel. We
will build dormitories. We will build a library. We will build a science building. We
will build a music hall. We will build a physical education plant. We will enlarge the
faculty and increase classroom space… How wild can a man’s imagination get?
1948-1957: Building Years
It’s not far from Olt Student Center to Old Main. But so many new buildings get in
the way, so much as the campus grown that to go from Lewis gym to the Music Hal
would take a four-minute miler, four minutes. For the first thirty years the college
didn’t put up a single new building. Oh, it moved the music department into the old
Byrum house close to where Wilson Library now stands. It got a war surplus
building to put up next to it for a little classroom space. It house students in places
like Flynt House and North Hall and Mills House, East Hall, the old Campbell House,
and the barnitory. But it didn’t build. It wasn’t easy in the early postwar era to round
up enough financing and contributions and carpenters to get the long-heralded new
men’s dorm finished and then to move girls into it. These were years for first. We
had our first football team just the start of this decade. It pulled out a 0-0 tie with
Manchester in its very first game and went down to seven straight losses from there.
But the boys learned their lessons well and the next year by late October were the
last undefeated, untied, unscored on college football team in the country, with their
latest victory being an 80-0 win over KcKendree. Then came Ball State 14, Anderson
7. But, the Raven crew was undefeated in the Hoosier College Conference.
The first honorary societies in various fields began to be formed on campus.
Snozz took up residence in the biology lab, an alligator gift from Dean Olt. These
were the days of the long, long, long dresses, and the first Homecoming Queen, Joyce
Hensley in 1950.
Whereas once students had been required to attend Park Place Church they
now fanned out to worship and serve in congregations across the city. Of those who
were pastors in the churches then, only George Skinner of Jackson Park remains at
the same post. William Fleenor was at the South Meridian, W. E. Reed at Arrow
Hieghts, John Clark at Sherman Street, Nathan Smith at Irondale, Ernest Gross at
Nroth Anderson, and Dale Oldham at park Place. East Side Church was going up and
Floyd Tunnell would soon become pastor there. No longer was there any gasoline
shortage, and gospel teams fanned out over the country. Among these was a typical
team composed of Ray Elders, Dwight Dye, Lester Hyslip and Lowell Hunt, in 1951.
The Alumni Association began giving distinguished alumni award in 1949,
the first going to Industrialist Vern Schield and Missionary Daisy Maiden Bone.
Out of these years, do you remember the Raven’s Nest? Or when the Flying
Raven flew?
The 1951 Yearbook was dedicated to Charlie Kissell. Born in Russia, Charlie
is supposed to have smuggled his way out after his sister in America sent him a
ticket. Landing in this country he worked on Great Lakes boats, in a Detroit auto
factory, at a Cincinnati machine shop, and in a Jasper, Alabama Mine. He finally came
to Anderson College in 1924 where he monitored classes, studied music, swept the
halls, kept up student spirit, and passed out tracts for some thirty years. “Whatever
it’s like outside right now, friends, its da Lord’s wedda.”
Christianity in Action came into being, sparked by Marie Strong as adviser,
and by Norman Beard as student leader. Model U.N. assemblies, established in 1947,
became community and central Indiana traditions.
The Macholtz brothers came back to the campus to coach and teach and by
the end of our decade Bob and his Raven basketballers had finished in at least a tie
for the top spot in the Hoosier Conference for three straight years. That record
would be extended further into the next decade.
By October 4, 1957, the Russians had put Sputnik into orbit and a new day
for space exploration had been ushered in. Anderson College, with burgeoning
enrollments, expanding curriculum and a string of new buildings was also in orbit.
Dunn Hall had been completed, and the new Wilson Library was under way. Martin
Hall was on the drawing boards and Lewis Gym was a gleam in several eyes.
1958-1967: Years of Change
It’s not far from Old Student Center to Old Main, but the walk is long because of the
changes along the way. Hiroshima brought in the atomic age two decades ago.
Sputnik brought in the space age ten years ago. We live in a whole new world. Time
change, personalities change, needs change, leadership changes. To every institution
comes times of crucial leadership change. That came to Anderson College early in
this last decade.
One reading through the Echoes would hardly recognize the school as being
the same place in 1959 that it was in 1958. The school’s beloved first president had
retired, to be succeeded by young Bob Reardon. The school’s long-term energetic
dean became ill and died, to be followed by young Bob Nicholson. Through death
and retirement the school lost leading teachers like Carl Kardatzke, Walter
Haldeman, Anna Koglin, and others. We alumni—and our school—lost the
warmhearted John Kane. A time of transition.
Outside, our world was moving rapidly. Technology was booming. John Glenn
became the first American in orbit. We moved from Eisenhower to Kennedy to
Johnson. We moved through the painful struggles of a whole world in revolution.
In the midst of such fast-changing times, the college student was changing
and his instruction was changing. New kinds of classes came on the scene. New
building continued: the Old Students Center, Martin Hall, Smith Hall, the School of
Theology, Lewis Gym, the Co-ed residence hall, the married students’ apartments,
Buildings and Grounds Department, Art Department and Galleries, Hartung Hall, and
a president’s residence. Dreams pushed on toward long-range campus planning.
In the midst of such rapid change, it is good to have firm memories to hold to.
Some people might remember that Nita Leonard was May queen in 1961. Others
might remember that in the year 1959 we had our best season in football, with a
seven-one record. That in 1961 we had our best year in basketball with a 23-3
record. Remember that team—Ken Strawn, Nolan Reed, Pete Culp, Barrett Bates,
Dienzel Dennis, Dick Leach, Dick Howell?
Or remember the blanket project where the student council collected a
thousand blankets for Arab refugees? Now it’s Tri-S—the Peace Corps-type Student
Summer Service program that involved AC students in work-study projects around
the world.
The Andersonian—and some other occasional publications—report the rapid
changes. Roger Hatch must hold some kind of record by editing that newspaper for
three straight years during this period. We’ve had recent Echoes editors like Davis
Lewis, Chery Zerbe Baird, Fay McCutchan Watkins, Don Yanik, and Judy Thurmond
Howell.
Much of campus life was headed up in the student council, chaired by such
students as Larry Brown, Bob Reinhart, and Fred Burnett. Back at the beginning of
this decade Red Damaske was president of the student council. Now he is a
“veteran” teacher at the institution.
Now instead of the five hundred or so volumes we started out with in the
first library we have some 70,000. Whereas a person could sped a year in school for
less than $200, in one recent year his basic expenses would reach something like
$1650. Instead of looking to a faculty of five, four of them part time, there are now
some eighty regular faculty members. And grades come out of an IBM 1620 data
processing system. Instead of sixty-five students, most of them part time, there are
now more than 1,600 on campus during a year. Times have changed. Each year the
walk to our past gets a little farther, and now the milestones along the way number
fifty. These have been good years. It has been good to grow, to change, to build. It
has been good to serve and worship and to find fellowship with each other across
these years.
“Praise of Famous Men”
I call to your memory Earl L. Martin. Year after year during the College’s hard
days of struggle this warm-hearted teacher like a strong and steady light, led his
students into a knowledge of the Word. He was a tender, compassionate man, full of
goodwill for all sorts and conditions of students. His writing charted new paths in
the Church and his memory rests upon us today like a heavenly benediction.
I call to your memory John A. Morrison. He came to the small struggling
school in 1919 and after nearly four decades of magnificent devotion to its
development was able to lay down his responsibility, having brought the young
institution to a position of strength and stability. Anderson College owes great debts
to many—but to no one more than he. It was his eye on the distant horizon that set
the course. It was his voice that called men to respond. It was his magnanimity that
healed the wounds, his whimsical humor that made us laugh at ourselves, and it was
his unshakeable conviction in the validity of the Christian college that caused others
to believe and follow.
I call to your memory Harold E. Achor, for five years teacher of speech and
political science, for 21 years distinguished member of the board of trustees and for
four ears its chairman. There was no aspect of the life of the College that failed to
interest him, whether it was the protection of an ancient tree, a winning football
team, the training of a minister, or the architecture of a new building. His love and
devotion to the College was unswerving. As a senior member of the Supreme Court
of Indiana he used his great influence to support every aspect of the College
program and to promote the welfare of this Assembly in whose membership he
found much joy.
I call to your memory A. T. Rowe. In the early thirties when the College was
living through perilous times his voice was heard throughout the land urging his
brethren to believe in the school, support the school, and to have confidence in its
leaders. He was like a piece of granite and his presence was like the shadow of a
mighty rock in a weary land. He fought for what he believed and he shall be
remembered not only for his great contribution to the publishing work but to many
generations of student to whom his life was an inspiration and a challenge.
###
This magazine was first published in September of 1967 for Anderson University’s
50th anniversary. Anderson College News was published monthly for “alumni and
friends of Anderson College.” This issue was edited by Vivian J. McFarling, and
Calvin M. Hanson, alumni director, and was later transcribed by Marissa Phillips, an
intern with the Office of University Communications.