"Wendell Halverson interview (former president of Buena Vista College), conducted by William Cumberland"

"Wendell Halverson interview (former president of Buena Vista College), conducted by William Cumberland"

"Buena Vista College -- Oral histories"

Oral histories -- Iowa -- Storm Lake

College presidents--Iowa--Storm Lake

Halverson, Wendell Q.

Buena Vista University

29-Aug-88

audio/mpeg

English

Sound

http://bvuarchives.bvu.edu/Audio/OralHistories/WendellHalverson.mp3

"William H. "Bill" Cumberland"

Wendell Halverson

WC=William Cumberland
WH=Wendell Halverson

WC: [00:00:01] [Cumberland seems to have started speaking before pressing "record."] --Halverson, good morning from Storm Lake Iowa August 29th, 1988. I enjoyed our telephone conversation yesterday evening, and I appreciate your willingness to participate in this oral history project for Buena Vista College. I hope that these tapes can be preserved by the college and certainly turn them over to the college if I feel they have the capability of preserving them. I want to list some questions for discussion, and I'll write them in a letter, which I will enclose as well. Some of the questions that I would like to have you address pertaining to the history of the the college: The first one is what interested you in the position in the first place? I might say I can well remember the young man who first appeared at Buena Vista College. I believe it was in December of 1961 or 19-- December of 1960, perhaps, before you took over the-- officially as president of the institution in February of 19-- 1961. But I'd like to know how-- what interested you in the position? Why did you want to become the president of a rather, admittedly, obscure institution like Buena Vista College? And following that up, I would like to know your-- your first impressions of Buena Vista and of Storm Lake and what impressed you as needing to be done immediately? I'm sure you had many first impressions, and I know that you can express both very graphically.

WC: [00:02:28] Then I'd like to have you define some of your successes, achievements. What was the most important to you-- you feel was most important during your administration and some disappointments and problems that may have come up. This sort of thing I can work in with the printed notes that I have, to go through all the reading material and the material that's appeared in various publications, and this will help add a personal note and make it more lively.

WC: [00:03:16] Fourth question that I would like to pose is, Why did you decide to leave in 1973? As I recall, it was September 1973 that, somewhat abruptly, we learned that you would be leaving Buena Vista College. Had you pondered this for some time? You feel that-- did you feel that you had perhaps been president for twelve years, and that was a long tenure? And the freshness that you'd felt at one time was more or less dissipating? And you wanted to search out new vistas, that you thought it was time for a change?

WC: [00:04:07] Fifth question, which is a rather critical one, but one I think is of some importance is, I'd like your analysis of John Williams that worked as the dean of the faculty between 1966 and 1973. I would like to have you assess his contributions and also his personality a little bit and some of the problems that he had with the faculty. There were a lot of-- a lot of problems. I must say that I have always tried to give John a fair assessment, in spite of the problems that sometimes existed between between the two of us. But I felt, over the long haul, I got along with him fairly well and that I could argue with him, that he didn't feel-- he never held a grudge. His excessive piety sometimes drove me up the wall. I felt he was sometimes unrealistic in assessing the human beings that he had to work with. We all have many frailties, and I'm not sure he was always able to recognize those or to deal effectively with them. But I have no doubt that he was a person of great integrity and that he always acted within his own frame of reference very honorably. I doubt very much that he could last two days In this modern-- in this modern era. But as I see it, he did a good job in hiring faculty, some very good people, I think most readily admit, were brought to the campus during this period. But I'd like to have your assessment of John Williams.

WC: [00:06:40] And a sixth question: What are some of the episodes that you remember clearly and some of the most stimulating or penetrating or horrifying, perhaps, experiences that you had during your administration?

WC: [00:07:00] And a seventh question involves your feelings about the new constitution and the creation of a faculty senate as it was instituted there during the academic year 1965 to 1966. Those are some general questions that I would appreciate your addressing and anything of an anecdotal nature, anything of great human interest, I certainly would appreciate your noting as I can't tell exactly what I'll use at this point. But I certainly would appreciate any commentary that comes to mind, and you know far better than than I do, what was important to you, and you have a vantage point that, of course, I do not have. I'd better get off the tape so there is some left for you. And I do appreciate this very, very much. [Recorder stops and restarts.]

WH: [00:08:14] Thank you very much, Dr. Cumberland. It's a pleasure for me to try to respond to the questions that you've asked. My memory's a little bit hazy on some things. This was almost 15 years since I left Buena Vista College, and, of course, the 12, almost 13 years that I was there were extremely exciting and very fulfilling for me. You asked what originally interested me in becoming president of Buena Vista College. That's a very interesting thing. One day I sat in the King George Hotel in New York with my later-to-become Vice-President of Development, Gordon Hermanson, who was then the director of Christian education in the presbytery of New York, and we worked very closely together, he with that responsibility and me with the responsibilities as the presbytery executive of the 65 churches in Manhattan, the Bronx, and also Staten Island, which were related to the Presbyterian Church. Martin said, "What are you going to-- What do you want to do eventually?" And I said, "Well, Marian says that we had a great time together at Heidelberg College and that she thought sometime I could make a contribution as a college president." And that reminded me that some years earlier when I was in Philadelphia for a meeting of the Board of Pensions on which I served as a director, I was invited to dinner with Faye Campbell (?) and Dr Ganz Little (?), who were interested in higher education. Dr. Campbell was liaison officer between the colleges of the church and the church. And they talked to me about the possibility of a college presidency, and I indicated that I would have some interest in that. Some years later I went to a national staff meeting in St. Paul [Minnesota], and one of my friends from Lake Forest College, where I received an honorary degree, said, "Wendell," he said, "you ought to be a college president." I said, "Well that would be fun. What's available?" "Well," he said, "I know that Buena Vista College is looking for a president," and so on, and that passed at that point. Imagine my surprise when about two months later--I think early in November--I had a call from Dr. Tom Eilers, asking me if I would be-- would submit some information and when I would be able to come out and visit the college. Well, having grown up in Webster City and having been in Storm Lake only once and having a wife who was a little tired of New York City, though I enjoyed it very much, I said, "Yes, I can certainly come and talk to you."

WH: [00:10:58] And so it was that I came out, I think sometime late in October, and was interviewed. I remember the interview very well because I remember one very veritable trustee who said with a bit of challenge in his voice: "Just why do you want to become president of Buena Vista College?" I said, "Well, I don't know that I want to become president of Buena Vista College. I was invited to come out here and take a look at it. I have a very satisfying and a very challenging position in New York. I've only been in it three years, and I'm somewhat hesitant to think about leaving it, but I'm here, at any rate, to explore." Well, to make a long story short the invitation came. My wife, who was a girl from Cleveland, who had studied at the University of Iowa where I met her, thought it would be great to be in the Midwest again. And as it worked out, we-- we came in the last day of January. We left New York in our station wagon and drove out to Storm Lake, and the snow just started to fall as they began to move the furniture into our house. My first impressions of Buena Vista College were very positive. I was somewhat surprised to see the paucity of facilities. I was impressed with the new administration building, which my predecessor, John Fisher, had developed following the fire of Old Main, and I was impressed with the trustees I met. They were cordial, and they were gracious, and I thought they were very professional. I've had conversations with other college boards who interviewed me as a possible college president, and I think I must say that, in comparison, the Buena Vista trustees were real professionals. I was very much impressed by that.

WH: [00:12:48] I was very much impressed by the administrative staff that Jack Fisher pulled together. Charles Zalesky was obviously a very careful, very astute, business manager, which is very important in the administration of the college fiscal responsibility. In academic authenticity, I think, I suspect that the two ingredients which do the most to make for a good college, opposite an academic facility meaning good faculty, of course, one needs also good students. I was impressed with the students I met. I was impressed very much with Dr. Wesselink, who was carrying two hats: Dean of Faculty and handling student affairs with competent assistance from Dean Brown and from Effie Montgomery.

WH: [00:13:36] The community is attractive and was attractive, the wide streets. The-- I was brought up selling shoes in my father's shoe store in Webster City, and I appreciated the-- what I thought was the aggressiveness and the competence of the people on Main Street. And, of course, the lake makes it a very attractive community. So I had very favorable impressions. I felt that it was important if I were to come, to seek to broaden their horizons a bit, to perhaps challenge somewhat the parochial atmosphere, to make arrangements so that students might be exposed to a wider diversification of people and interests and so on. And I might discuss that later.

WH: [00:14:29] You ask whether my-- what were the most successful endeavors and greatest disappointments. Well, obviously, I had to concentrate a good bit of time on developing both extended faculty and facilities and, not by my choosing, but by the facts of the case: the development of facilities took an inordinate amount of my time and effort. And of course I-- I'm-- I'm pleased that we were able to construct the chapel. Thanks to the gift of the Schallers, which had been already acquired under the leadership of John Fisher, and I think that the completion of the chapel was a kind of symbolic high point because it said something to the community and the surrounding area about-- about the college. It emphasized our church-relatedness, and it provided a facility which enabled us to do many things to get the total student body together in an attractive situation for convocations, a place to hold a [unintelligible], a place for the excellent concerts that came under the direction of Will Green and Bob Pfaltzgraff. And, of course, I was delighted when Dr. Hansen of the community responded to our invitation and purchased for us the excellent organ, so I derived, being a churchman, a great deal of satisfaction out of the building of the chapel.

WH: [00:15:55] L One would have been blind to reality if he hadn't seen the tremendous need for a new library at Buena Vista College and so immediately on the completion of the chapel or even before, we emphasized the need for the-- for the library, and I felt that the library which we built at very modest cost; I think we spent less than three hundred thirty thousand dollars as a-- it was a fine addition And we tried to design it in such a way that it could be easily expanded. As I remember we had 22 foot modules and it seemed to me that it would be possible, if need be, expanded ,either to the south or to the west. We also had to build dormitories, and we were able to do that. I thought we made some compromises. I suppose we made many compromises aesthetically in terms of the difficulty of acquiring funds, and we saved money by repeating the plan for two men's dormitories which had already-- three men's dormitories which had already-- one of which had already been built and one would have liked to have had more amenities in the building, but one does what he can when it is difficult to find funds and when one is under the gun, so to speak, and I of course-- we went on to remodel Smith Hall and to add lavoratories and remodel Swope Hall and to add the science facility, which we needed very badly and also the campus center, and, of course, much to the surprise of many, we were also able to build the field house and the swimming pool and those were sources of real satisfaction. I am in a sense a-- a frustrated architect.

WH: [00:17:54] Much of my church experience had been in supervision and raising money for church buildings as a pastor in La Grange, Illinois ,but also as a presbytery executive in New York, where we worked very closely with one of the outstanding young architect students of Frank Lloyd Wright, who later we called to Buena Vista to review our long-range planning and campus development.

WH: [00:18:15] I also felt a great deal of satisfaction in the way in which we were able to increase the size of the faculty and a great deal of pleasure in the quality of many of the faculty people who we called. I suppose the greatest disappointments were to call someone to a position having come and then proved not to be as effective as you hoped or to find that he was very effective and then got a call to someone else. I spoke to one of our trustees about that once. I said we're losing two of our good people. He was Mr Duncan. Dr. Duncan who was a pers-- Highly professional in the field of personnel relations. He said, "Well, that means you're hiring good people." And I suspect that that is a measure, if you hire people and they are called up higher, well, then you're hiring good people.

WH: [00:19:08] That doesn't mean that those who stay aren't good, and I'm just pleased to think about the people I had something to do with in attracting to Buena Vista, who've stayed there and have made tremendous contributions. The first person I hired-- hired was Darrell Peck, and I'm pleased to see that he's received an honor in terms of an award that the college is able now to make to faculty members in the matter of sabbaticals.

WH: [00:19:38] You ask-- great disappointments I-- you know, I don't remember a lot of great disappointments I suspect there were many points when I was disheartened and wondered whether we could ever make it. I hope that we would be able to-- to challenge the churches more aggressively than we did. And yet when I look back I realize that the presbytery and the local church and local people supported the church very well. I was very grateful, and I was very impressed with the very beginning men of Storm Lake Main Street campaign, and I take my hat off to the people who organized those traditions and the development directors who led them in my day, Gordon Hermanson and Clarence Richardson, and later Bob Siefer and earlier on Ed Hale. It was very impressive, so impressive that when Mr. Sparks and the National Association for the Development of Fundraising from corporations on a visit to Storm Lake was well enough impressed that I was invited on two occasions to tell the Buena Vista story at national gatherings of development officers, I think that's a great tribute to the business community of Storm Lake and to the loyalty they've had to the college through the years.

WH: [00:21:00] Why did you decide to leave in '73, you ask-- my thoughts at the time as I reflected upon my presidency. Well, I had had a conviction early on from experience and from observation that most institutions ought to have a change of leadership about every 10 years, and I had already been there 12. There were good reasons for that. There were things in process that needed to be completed, and I think timing and phasing are very important. In a sense, I had had several interviews of other college presidencies without any particular zeal on my part. I felt that the new wave of need at Buena Vista College was not in the field of buildings but in the field of student recruitment and in the field of faculty development. And I felt that a new hand certainly could bring more strength. The 12 years that I was there were strenuous years. I worked very hard. I came when I was 45.

WH: [00:21:57] I left when I was 57 and at 57, I felt that the opportunities for other challenges would be somewhat decreasing in the years to come ahead, and I think colleagues of mine in the Iowa College Presidents Association asked me to consider the business of heading up the Iowa Association of Private Colleges and Universities. I took it very seriously, partly because I played an impressive role, I think, in the initiation of that association. I firmly believed in its need. I believe without it, the private colleges in Iowa would have suffered greatly. The tuition grant, which we were able to establish under Irwin Lubbers' leadership has been, I think, a great factor in strengthening the independent colleges and without it, I think, many of our colleges would not have been able to serve the number of students they have served, and I think, of course it was a great value for the state. I always used to tell legislators that for every dollar they appropriated to the student tuition grant program that they were saving three dollars because if those students had had to go on to the state university that's what it would have cost the state and the terms of increased appropriations for the state schools.

WH: [00:23:18] So, when that invitation came, I considered it and felt that that was the thing that I should do, and I am happy to say that I had a very productive and happy seven years in Des Moines representing the independent colleges to the governor and working very closely with our colleagues in the public sector, where I made many friends ,including Sandy Boyd of the University of Iowa and the president of Iowa State University and his colleagues and also members of the independent-- of the community colleges. As I left the presidency, I felt I had, in a sense, paid my dues. I had prepared the institution, I felt, for a change by earlier on inviting Lester Williams to serve as assistant to the president. And that was partly by design that I knew one day that I probably would be leaving and that it would be well for someone to be groomed to fill in because I had known of institutions where, in the interim situation, colleges have suffered so that-- that was-- th-- that's a reflection upon what we were doing there. As a president at Buena Vista, I had to make many tough decisions, some of them that were perhaps hurtful to some of my very best friends but which I felt, in prayer and in careful consideration, needed to be done for the good of the institution. And I remember that it was very difficult when we decided that Bill Wesselink should not try to divide his time between both student affairs and academic affairs because the job had grown too big for any one person and the board of trustees took my recommendation that we add a staff person, in spite of the fact that we were very aware of the fact that faculties are always suspicious of administrations in the way administrations grow. And I was grateful that they all responded as well, as he certainly did to become the vice president of student affairs in which he did a magnificent job and always related very well to students and--

WH: [00:25:33] And that maybe introduces us to the next question which you ask is would I comment on the work with John Williams; assess his contributions and perhaps his weaknesses. One of his strengths was that he was very sensitive to the fact that his colleague, Bill Wesselink, had held the position before him, and the two of them, I think, deserve a lot of credit for the statesman-like way in which they approached their responsibilities, and they worked together on my staff, and I salute them both. Certainly John's contribution was, as you suggested, in the field of recruiting faculty. We had, in those days, a faculty-- college faculty registry and it was the source for us to find available people for open positions. And I remember the executive of that one saying, "Do you know that your dean is the most aggressive, the most on the ball, the first one here?" And it was true that he had screened those things and found the best people and went after them with intelligence and with a certain kind of tenacity. And it brought to us many, many excellent faculty people. John was interesting because he was religiously on the very conservative side. Academically, he was perhaps almost to the left. He had studied under L. Joe (?) Henderson of the famous Michigan Institute. He had progressive ideas. He had good standards for academic excellence, and he sought to bring an emphasis to the college, which I thought was very important. He did, I think, have some difficulty in establishing a rapport with faculty ,and there's some incidents that might have been due to that personality. As I say, he was tenacious in his support of ideas in which he firmly believed.

WH: [00:27:32] I thought he was very professional in all his relationships and that his contributions to the academic excellence of the institution were very good. I don't know why it was difficult for him to maintain rapport with the faculty. I think, in one sense, he was such a-- such a good person. He-- he and his wife were certainly good parents. They had a marvelous social conscience about the needs of others. They adopted that little black boy who had difficulties, and they did a beautiful job with him, and I suspect, in a sense, that all of us somewhat felt a sense-- a twinge of conscience as we judged our own lives, our own commitments, against John's, but it was obvious, at one point, that the relationships with faculty were not as strong as they should be. And I-- I-- I worked with John to clarify the situation, and he wisely, I think, accepted the responsibility as serving as the dean at the Friends University of his tradition in Kansas.

WH: [00:28:48] You asked about episodes which I remember most clearly: things tragic, things amusing, people, the board, administration, faculty, students. Did the Vietnam era create a dramatic break with tradition?

WH: [00:29:02] I didn't feel that the Vietnam era made that great a [sic] impact. I certainly was against it. I didn't carry banners. I thought our policy was wrong. I was-- was shocked when I discovered that one of our students, the son of a judge in southeast Iowa had been killed in the conflagration. But what were the episodes I remember most clearly? Well, I remember the wonderful trustee-faculty dinners in the fall, usually hosted by Tom Eilers. I thought those were very pleasant occasions. I remember football games and basketball games with great joy and baseball games. The success of our coaches in those areas were very pleasing to us. My wife is a great baseball fan. We remember going down to St. Joseph to see the baseball team play. I was pleased when I learned of students who earned admission into outstanding graduate schools.

WH: [00:30:04] I was pleased when we were able to receive the Heater fund, which enabled us to make grants for short sabbaticals and for further student-- for further study to members of the faculty. I remember how upset I was when we first had to deal with students who, toward the end of the year, were involved in the use of drugs. I remember-- I remember a faculty member who took after me and how our faculty senate committee sided with me, rather than with him, and a pleasant-- pleasant times with the board members and with fellow administration members and, as I say ,with the faculty receptions.

[00:30:59] You asked me to comment on my feeling at the time about the new constitution and the creation of a faculty senate as it was instituted in 1965-66. My college experience up to that time had been in-- during the-- just after the war in '46 'to 49 at Heidelberg College, and I was surprised that when I came to Buena Vista, that our faculty did not have more participation, and I welcomed the new constitution, and I appreciated the way in which it was brought about. It was not a matter which was high on my priority in terms of an approach to improving the college but I was pleased that there were faculty members who knew what was happening in the larger world and that the whole area of participatory democracy was important for the integrity of the institution and the whole total idea of shared responsibility really created no problem for me.

[00:32:01] I really rejoiced in it, and I think that it took us some time to grow into it, and I know there were times when the faculty committees let things slip by, which could have been handled more quickly and easily expeditiously by administrative fiat. But it is true that a college has got to be collegial; it's got to be more of a congregation than an aggregation, and that, I think, the work of those who worked and you, Doctor Cumberland, and, I think, Dr. Tollefson, among others were instrumental in that it made a very positive contribution to the health of the institution.

WH: [00:32:37] Did I feel when I left in '73 that church-related ties were weakening? I do. Do I feel today that there is still a place for quality and church-related liberal arts college or, for that matter, liberal arts colleges? Well I tried to fight the good battle for maintaining the total concept of liberal arts education and to avoid compartmentalization, and I was disappointed at several points when suggestions I made to faculty and committees ,that I thought would contribute to wholeness and to interdepartmentalism, were not taken seriously. I was sorry that we lost the battle about the language requirements. That was related pragmatically to the admission of the students from high schools. I still believe that what the country needs is more well-grounded people and less technocrats. I know that Buena Vista, in its history, had three main segments: the classical tradition, the normal teacher training tradition, and the commercial tradition. Those are there from the very beginning, and certainly I feel that business leaders that I respect, all state that they feel the importance of a liberal arts education, a broad base in history and the arts, in the sciences, mathematics, and English. So that I found it very difficult to enjoy the growing vocationalism of many of our colleges and universities, and I decry the fact that many of them have given up the requirements or-- the-- the offerings in such fields as physics and many of them have softened their philosophy and religion departments, and I think that is a matter not to be happy about. Certainly what's happened in the world does not give us any sense that we can continue as an insular parochial institution, and I applaud all those efforts which bring the study of languages, and the study of history, and which expose young people to other cultures and to those values. I applaud all those efforts. Foreign study, the bringing of foreign students and foreign scholars.

WH: [00:35:07] One of the things that I tried to do in our faculty appointments was to see that we had authentic representatives from other cultures on the faculty and following the great contribution that Dr. Hirsch made, we were glad when we could invite to the faculty people from India, and I remember how happy we were when Dr. Cruz came to teach accounting from Cuba, and I remind myself that we hired him over the telephone almost. And how fortunate we were in that particular case. I know that we had some difficulties at the beginning with some of the black students, many of whom came from New York, partly at my urging, since I had contacts there. I remember Morgan [last name??] the first Nigerian who came, had many many problems, who was supported by my friends in New York, and I think that there is a place and there's a crying need for quality liberal arts colleges. I think they should be related with the church and that the church emphasis is important. And particularly the church, in the sense of the ecumenical church with maybe a theology which I would call a theology of Christian realism.

WH: [00:36:32] So those are my efforts to answer some of the questions you've asked, and I hope to be able to play this with you and perhaps in another tape or on this tape, you and I can carry on a little further conversation. After you've heard this, you may ask some questions of interpretation.[Recorder stops and starts]

WC: [00:36:58] Maybe it is. Well, it doesn't look like it. You know, it's going now.

WH: [00:37:01] Is it going?

WC: [00:37:03] Yeah.

WH: [00:37:03] As it's recording--

WC: [00:37:05] You know, I don't know whether it's recording or not because I don't know what movements-- there!

WH: [00:37:09] Hopefully we are recording now. [Cumberland laughs] We were just talking about how I thought-- how I was walking on thin ice-- I was talking about the-- what I call academic deficits and one of the college presidents' responsibilities which I felt keenly about that, well-- financial-- avoiding financial deficits was the key to maintaining trust in your gift support, and we also-- the administration are aware of what academic deficits we as a nation are working hard to overcome those, and I remember that one year we'd had a good year and had a little surplus. [unintelligible] went out and added six positions and hired six new people. It was that very year that the enrollment went down [unintelligible] and as I thought of it, I thought, that's kind of silly that every single year in November projecting for a year that begins in September. It won't be until September that we know what kind of enrollment I have. And I still I've got to put out package contracts in February. So we discussed that in my staff meeting, and we finally decided to give continuing contracts with assurance of the board of trustees, and I had the board of trustees to do it. To state as a policy that faculty salaries has first priority of institutional resources. Of course we had fixed-- fixed responsibilities in terms of [unintelligible] dormitories [unintelligible] succession planning, too. And we then went to-- to the department heads, saying that they would give continuing contracts in October [unintelligible] seek to give you increases based on enrollment and the reality [unintelligible] how close we made our projections, and hopefully they will be optimistic. And we went through the Department of Ed. [unintelligible] Personally we had a positive response from everyone, and I think that contributed to a sense of collegiality that the fact of the matter [unintelligible] experience [unintelligible] We had an opportunity to [unintelligible] responsibly [unintelligible] preceding [unintelligible] the effect of enrollment [unintelligible] on the [unintelligible] retreat. I was very grateful for the support which we received.

WC: [00:39:17] The faculty--

WH: [00:39:17] What was for the better was that in October we were able to give a bigger increase than [unintelligible] tried to stretch our muscles [unintelligible] support. [laughter].

WC: [00:39:49] That was probably why the support was so strong. [crosstalk] I assumed it was to everyone's self-interest.

WH: [00:39:54] Yeah, well I think it was but it could-- the-- the point was expressed that faculty shouldn't have to worry about that. That's administrative responsibility. That's our job to go out and raise the money, so--

WC: [00:40:11] Of course, that system still exists [unintelligible]

WH: [00:40:12] Ah, Keith told me that he'd continued that. [crosstalk] I don't know of many colleges that do it.

WC: [00:40:15] No, I don't know of any other college that does it, but it's all right.

WH: [00:40:20] It's very sensible and responsible. I think it's an approach and it started with me, and I don't know what the year was.

WC: [00:40:26] I have another question I thought of this morning and it-- I often hear that Buena Vista lacks a soul. People have come-- Consultants. And they've said, Where is-- what's your soul? What's your soul? And I'm not so sure that I can define our soul. But did you feel in the years-- I'm not sure that there wasn't more of a soul in the '60s than there is today. I view 1980, with the gift, as kind of a watershed. The old school and the new school, and I think they're rather dramatic changes and a change in emphasis. And I'm not sure there wasn't a soul, historically, to the college. And I just would like to have you comment on that. Is there such a thing? If so, what-- what was our soul?

WH: [00:41:26] That's-- that's a very good question. I'm-- I'm sure that in the beginning the college began with the efforts of the church augmented by the efforts in the community and wanted to have some great, great teachers. There was Fracker, for instance. He was certainly a renaissance man. He could teach physics, he could teach Greek, he could teach philosophy, he could teach [unintelligible] religion. He taught because he had that solid background. And when the student body was smal,l and the opportunity for higher education was not everywhere present, that those students were grateful for what they got. I remember Dr. Drury, who was one of our famous graduates graduating, I think, in 1917, saying to me that he used to hike to Sac City from Early and then get on the train and come up to Buena Vista College, and he said that he was like a sponge, that he just sucked up all that he could learn. He certainly was a substantial scholar in his field [unintelligible] winning of the West [unintelligible].

WC: [00:42:31] Oh it was very-- Very good.

WH: [00:42:33] -- it's very good work. Finished a doctorate in Edinburgh. And I thought about one of the men-- one of the men who took part in my ordination, was a Presbyterian minister by the name of Samuel Enside (sp) who came out of this general area, I think, probably from-- Well, I guess maybe his father-- I think his father was a treasurer of the college. He was a missionary in China and during-- ended up running the Council of Churches in Whittier, California. Now those-- those people got a stamp of something that was great. I remember one of the graduating classes had five people, four of whom went into-- into the mission field. NAMES, Mitchell, NAMES, can't remember the others in the class, and I used to say-- I said to Bill Wesselink or someone, I said, "A lot, you know, we've got 60 graduates These are average in terms of people who are trying to respond to the college's motto: Education for Service. Is our record going to be as good as theirs?" I remember one time, even before graduation ,seeing a young man out in front of my house looking into his new, fancy Chevrolet Stingray, which was an expensive automobile and a kind of a plaything. And I said to him, "What's this?" and he said, "Well," he said, "When I started college I made up my mind that this is my first new automobile." I said, "All right," it's a different generation than mine. I mean, I got my first Bulova about seven years ago. And I-- I went in and I said to my wife, I said, "I guess he didn't catch on to what we were trying to do." His sense of values [unintelligible] But I think there is a a soul I-- if you look back at the graduates, I think a great number of them went into a teaching career, or as an administrator, medicine. And there were some pretty distinguished guys that came out of this little place. I think Frederick Smith [unintelligible] Frederick Smith was the examiner for years in the basic sciences for the state of Iowa. So a lot of good men. Not a lot but, the ones you said were well-trained. I think those people caught something that was valuable as related to Christian values and in a sense, service [unintelligible].

WC: [00:44:51] Do you think it's the Christian purpose that provided the soul-- the founding--

WH: [00:44:56] I think it did, and I think it was hard. I think it's hard to maintain that because you have a pluralistic-- living in a pluralistic culture and living also in an institution which is supported by the Presbyterian church but has more of a Roman Catholic [unintelligible] student body than Presbyterians, and I suppose you might talk about the experience of giving up required chapel. I thought there was some value in that. I think a college that never practices collegiality when everyone gets together has a rough time getting a sense of the college. On the other hand, I think, worship has to be voluntary. This became very obvious in the '60s, that there were young people that were very [unintelligible] with the idea [unintelligible] The tape goes silent for 13 seconds.

WH: [00:46:01] The question of the soul which you ask which is a very penetrating question. I think that there's no doubt that every institution develops some kind of a corporate personality to try to [unintelligible] Surely there must be themes and counter-themes and I suppose there are subcultures within it-- within the major cultural thrust, and I-- I think it's probably pretty dangerous to try to say what that is, it's [unintelligible] reflection of what faculty-- what's the word I want? It-- what comes from faculty in the teaching situation. What administration [unintelligible], what the president articulates. What the goals are. Certainly I've been in and around enough polyglot situations to know that it's been difficult to generate the depth of Christian commitment [unintelligible] desire to see. [crosstalk] My old neighbor, who was one of my major professors, wrote a book called Moral Man and Immoral Society [by Reinhold Niebuhr]. It was very profound, and one by one we have a pretty good sense of values [unintelligible].

WC: [00:47:27] Do you see anything that prevents us from really identifying as the soul?

WH: [00:47:37] Well I try to-- try to put in words the description of your own soul.

WC: [00:47:44] [laughs].

WH: [00:47:44] And I think you-- you know, I think we've come up with something that appreciated the-- the Christian doctrine of sin. And you could also come up with something that reflected the Christian doctrine, the image of God and all those dialectics and all the paradoxes have to be in it. You know, my father-in-law once described a very pious man as a psalm-singing SOB. [unintelligible] man or not, you know? [unintelligible]

WC: [00:48:18] Well do you think pluralism is that--

WH: [00:48:22] I-- I have a positive feeling about pluralism. I know that a society that is monolithic, heterogeneous can narrow in on things [unintelligible]. But when these young people go out and into a world that's pluralistic [unintelligible], they better be able to bend and appreciate the points of others and I think-- I think that is one of the difficulties. I remember talking to a college president, a friend of mine, who said that "The way that I project enrollment for the next year is I go back and look at the baptismal records of our church. And there is a direct relationship between the baptismal records in our church and the size of our freshman class." Well, that institution is a very heterogeneous institution. They all look alike, they all sing alike, they all think alike. And that has a certain kind of strength. Not-- it's not for me and my house. I appreciate diversity. I think that God is the creator of diversity. Rather than trying to rubber stamp everybody [as] our own, we ought to appreciate what we can learn and what we can gain from others. [unintelligible].

WC: [00:49:29] My point is that often institutions that are narrow perhaps have less difficulty identifying that--[crosstalk].

WH: [00:49:45] Oh, yes. Oh, yes. Oh, absolutely. Sure. [crosstalk]

WC: [00:49:47] --than it is to [unintelligible] like this--

WH: [00:49:48] Right.

WC: [00:49:49] Which tended not to be narrowly Presbyterian. Earlier you used the word Christian realism which I think was-- is a pretty-- a pretty good-- an inflammatory term if I'm searching for the soul of the institution at least through much of its history--

WH: [00:50:04] I would hope it would be [unintelligible] [crosstalk]

WC: [00:50:04] I might use-- I might use that term to describe it because If th-- per-- had a Christian purpose but it went beyond that and it was-- it-- because the Presbyterian Church is not that narrow and it was ecumenical in its spirit, and it combined the Christian realism with a secular humanism that you don't use that [laughs] term-- [crosstalk].

WH: [00:50:29] I'm-- I'm not afraid to use that term. [crosstalk]

WC: [00:50:30] I'm not--. [crosstalk]

WH: [00:50:31] Martin Marty [unintelligible] Martin Marty recently wrote an article in which he talked about the positive aspects of secularism [unintelligible] somewhere in the office. [unintelligible] video [unintelligible] this thick [unintelligible] by repeating a word that you condemn somebody. Humanism is a great thing.

WC: [00:50:49] That's why I feel I-- [crosstalk]

WH: [00:50:52] --and you know to the credit of this-- to the credit of most Presbyterian ideologies, the whole problem of science and religion, the conflict of the 1890s up to the 1920s, that never was a problem that I know of in any of our Presbyterian colleges. We are teachers or trustees and so on and so forth. A concept which looked at the-- not only the limitations of the scientific method but also the possibilities.

WC: [00:51:24] I can remember President Boyd when I researched the first book, denouncing the excesses of the Scopes trial.

WH: [00:51:33] Yeah.

WC: [00:51:34] And making those comments which I read about and certainly showed a humanistic view-- viewpoint. But I-- I see that, but again as I-- as I-- and I see this emanating from the-- from the faculty and because we didn't train a lot of ministers--

WH: [00:51:52] No.

WC: [00:51:53] We train people-- [crosstalk] who will hopefully have that spirit and I think that they-- that they get but that as we move into a new period where there would be enormous emphasis upon technology--

WH: [00:52:07] Right.

WC: [00:52:07] And business. I think it's a lot more difficult to identify that soul. So how-- how do you do it? You probably can't give me an answer to that.

WH: [00:52:19] Well, if I-- if I knew the answer [unintelligible] I'd go down and talk to the president and tell him that I-- for a fee would tell him how to do it. But I don't have the answer.

WC: [00:52:31] Well, I don't either. I-- One of the things I-- I want to find the soul but I think, of course, part of-- part of the problem is the age we live-- we live in, I think. So often I feel nationally surrounded with greed.

WH: [00:52:51] There is an excessive materialism certainly. Again, somebody has to preach the sermon about the fellow who built bigger and bigger barns and lost his soul.

WC: [00:53:07] But what we're really-- we're really not very church-related anymore.

WH: [00:53:10] The-- that happened when I was a president, and I fought it in my Presbyterian college union. We moved from a legal kind of a relationship with the Church to what was called a covenant. Right now, I have a positive feeling, but I'll admit that I think that the-- that Buena Vista College itself owes a great great deal to the fact that the-- that the Church had a legal basis for dealing with a real problem just more efficiently. And I doubt it-- I doubt if Buena Vista College would have done as well as it's done if it hadn't been for the fact that the church could step in when it needed.

WC: [00:53:58] I always had a question about the end of the-- of Olson's term. Do you know why-- the why of the forced resignation?

WH: [00:54:07] Well, I--

WC: [00:54:08] Actually it came in November.

WH: [00:54:10] I don't know. Well, I-- All I know is-- is that the Synod of Iowa demanded [unintelligible] procedure that was an investigative procedure, which [unintelligible] administrative commission and that was related to the-- to the question of [unintelligible] college is vaguely related to the church it's got to be a college that has certain elements: excellence and stability, and so on and so forth. I'm not going to sit here and condemn any of my predecessors, I just know that responsible people were working here. Recently in an order [unintelligible] came to the conclusion that it was a time for a change in board structure. You're the historian; you would know more about that than I would.

WC: [00:55:01] Well, I never quite cleared it up, but I-- I know many people like the Hirsches thought very, very highly of Olson.

WH: [00:55:09] I think this [unintelligible].

WC: [00:55:12] Well, that's the theme that I used when I did it the first time but then I know that some members of the family were very bitter--

WH: [00:55:20] Well, yes.

WC: [00:55:21] About it.

WH: [00:55:20] I went to his funeral. [unintelligible] He was hurt. But you know if I had stayed here 25 years [unintelligible].

WC: [00:55:41] Well ,I-- I wondered if that couldn't have waited [laughs] rather than forcing it mid-year. [crosstalk].

WH: [00:55:49] I don't know anything about that.

WC: [00:55:50] Well and then-- then I've heard he didn't get a pension.

WH: [00:55:59] I think the minutes will show there was something.

WC: [00:56:00] But I-- what I have found in the minutes-- his sister-- which I, of course, bonded with, saying that there was no pension. What I found in the minutes was the-- the board that existed at the time of the resignation voted a pension of $200.00. But the next board dropped it to eighty dollars. And I found no record of no-- no pension at all. [crosstalk] I-- I-- I-- I tread light water on that last time-- last time. Particularly because it was so close but I think it's-- it's something that has to somehow be-- [crosstalk].

WH: [00:56:36] I don't know that I can help you much. I can't say that I remember from what we originally had [unintelligible] pension system [unintelligible] arcane [unintelligible] TIAA and CREF to [unintelligible] I know that [unintelligible] the people who worked here who are looking at possible pensions [unintelligible] $80.00 a month. [unintelligible crosstalk]

WC: [00:57:08] [unintelligible].

WH: [00:57:08] It sounds like nothing now [unintelligible] '54 [unintelligible]. In '54, I was pastor of [unintelligible] Church [unintelligible] Chicago-- [unintelligible]

WC: [00:57:25] Well, I-- That's kind of a mystery [laughs] in there, which is-- is of some-- [unintelligible crosstalk] But I wonder why while all of a sudden because they'd just achieved North Central accreditation in 1952.

WH: [00:57:43] That might be related to that.

WC: [00:57:45] Well, but as I say, he achieved something very significant And I-- so you think the feeling was that you couldn't move the institution forward academically.

WH: [00:57:57] I don't know. I-- I've never read-- [crosstalk]

WC: [00:58:00] That's the best we know-- [crosstalk].

WH: [00:58:01] I would think that definitely if you read between the lines of whatever the synod report is that the synod report-- The commission which resports to the Synod of Iowa would be-- I would think would be a careful document [unintelligible]

WC: [00:58:19] Why I know the Hirsches always thought he was wonderful.

WH: [00:58:23] Well he was becasue he hired the Hirsches. I don't suppose anybody gives him credit for all the people that he hired. I was just talking to Dennis Dykema. He was hired by John Williams [unintelligible]

WC: [00:58:44] Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. But a lot of people John Williams hired didn't say much good about him. [laughs] Wouldn't say a whole lot good about him.

WH: [00:58:45] Well, I am will admit there's famous story about a college president who didn't have all the academic degrees and so on and at this institution, he did a terrific job and hired all these terrific people in gratitude for having been hired [unintelligible]

WC: [00:59:05] [laughs]

WH: [00:59:06] That's the hazard. That's the occupational hazard of a college president--

WC: [00:59:07] Well, it was a very interesting period, and I found John Williams a controversial figure. I think, a very interesting one, and he was In many ways, he was one of the architects, really. See, people today, they look at all of this today and the huge-- the endowment was probably four hundred thousand dollars when you came.

WH: [00:59:26] [unintelligible]

WC: [00:59:26] And it might have-- might have been and now on paper anyway it's 33 million. And they have a the tendency to think that there wasn't anything before 1973 or '74 when they came and actually there was. And some of the things people take credit for today actually existed [laughs] before they got here.

WH: [00:59:49] That's always true. [unintelligible] She raised the money for the chapel, I got the privilege of building it, you know?

WC: [01:00:01] But-- that's very inter-- well It's difficult to really put your finger on the-- on the soul.

WH: [01:00:07] I think so, I think so.

WC: [01:00:09] And I don't-- But I know Warren Martin, he's one of the consultants that they brought in was commenting on-- on that. Where is your soul? You haven't really identified your soul. At first I thought well, is it really necessary to identify? So is there such a thing? Does a nation even have a soul?

WH: [01:00:29] Good question.

WC: [01:00:31] But apparently they want, they want something. they want to find this-- [crosstalk]

WH: [01:00:37] What is the-- what is the motivating essential force, a common-- common bond? You know, is it love of learning?

WC: [01:00:49] Well maybe-- maybe if you somehow you can find or define the soul, it helps with your own-- the ethics-- some of the ethical questions, a matter of integrity-- integrity of an institution. Somehow I-- I think as we move into the present and through the present and into the future there's-- if we don't have those foundations-- that foundation. And so people go off in many different directions and they-- they don't--

WH: [01:01:23] A lot of the old college catalogs say something about the Judeo-Christian tradition and [unintelligible] that it is kind of a basic thing. Now, democracy is variously-- variously understood. Democratic values are variously understood. Democracy is one thing to one person and another to another person. You talk about democratic values [unintelligible] means rule by the majority and good procedure, check and balance. Those are all principles that I think derive, really, from Christian theology.

WC: [01:02:01] Well, you can sell your soul. You can lose-- you can lose your soul but I-- the question l have is it's-- it's--I think it's difficult to maintain it when we place such tremendous emphasis upon the business values. I'm not opposed to business. And I'm not opposed to the-- to the School of Business, but I would have revolved my school of business around economics, which I think would have been truer to the traditional spirit of the institution--

WH: [01:02:28] Marketing--

WC: [01:02:28] Rather than marketing management and what they-- what they-- what they do. But I think It makes things more difficult and more complicated because I don't-- I st-- l see some of the business values as not really being totally compatible with the traditional values that we would-- we talked about Christian realism there earlier.

WH: [01:03:00] There-- there-- there is a great temptation in the church to give-- always one of the great temptations from the church is when it gives premature sanction to the status quo on what is [unintelligible] it would seem to me. I used to speak, I think here, often about the two functions of our college as a learning institution. One is the priestly function and I suspect this is historically partly involved in intensity to remind people of the priest is there to remind people of what was good in the past and what needs to be remembered from the past. The prophet-- prophetic function is to remind the priest that it wasn't all that good, probably, or that there were-- there were-- were shortcomings in it that the-- that the prophet is always putting forth the [vision] of the ultimate kingdom which puts all other kingdoms under judgment, so that all of our achievements are partial. They're all fragmentary. And the moment [of absolute fallacy] we're involved in a new form of idolatry and I think that's what you probably feel. That is a very real danger and I think sensitive people [unintelligible] are aware of that and certainly one of the functions of the church and that would be the function of the church-related college,which is to play [unintelligible] a prophetic, a priestly role, to introduce students to the culture which brought them up into all of the good things and also to hold those all up to the light [unintelligible]

WC: [01:04:33] Well, it's difficult to do that if you-- [crosstalk] And if you move in the direction of the trade school it's difficult to do it. And-- [crosstalk].

WH: [01:04:40] And harder at a school of business. It's very hard to emphasize social responsibility in training the future business [leaders]. And social responsibility of business, and one of our own graduates, Les Rollins, was very much involved in this. [unintelligible] Religious foundations for Business Ethics which we discussed those things.

WC: [01:05:04] Well, he's had some influence here. He died recently.

WH: [01:05:07] Yes, I know.

WC: [01:05:07] Yeah.

WH: [01:05:08] So there are-- There is a great feeling [unintelligible]

WC: [01:05:12] Well, I have-- I have concern about that. And I think it makes it--

WH: [01:05:15] Well, everybody should have concerns.

WC: [01:05:16] Well, I think we probably better-- better stop here.

WH: [01:05:19] All right. You've got enough to--keep yourself-- [recording ends]

audio cassette

1:05:42

80 kbps