Certain writers are famous for one book, such as Harper Lee and To Kill a Mockingbird or Margaret Mitchell and Gone with the Wind. Others generate saleable wordage as easily as sneezing. For instance, Erle Stanley Gardner, creator of unbeatable lawyer Perry Mason, positioned multiple typewriters around his office and simply switched from one manuscript to another. His colleague, English crime novelist John Creasey, wrote 562 novels; and Barbara Cartland published an astonishing 723 Regency romances, aside from several non-fiction titles.
In the world of juvenile fiction, Roy J. Snell wrote somewhat less but lived as large, trekking as hazardously as Ernest Hemingway or Jack London. “Did you ever eat walrus meat?” asked advertisements for Snell’s books. “Did you ever drive a dog team, travel in a boat made of skins, or sleep in a bag?” Gosh, no! replied generations of wide-eyed boys and girls starved for vicarious thrills. But Snell did all this and more, tackling perilous frontiers – deserts, seas and tropics – with gusto and humor. Born in 1880 at Laddonia, Missouri, he moved with his family to northern Illinois where he worked his way through Wheaton Academy and Wheaton College. Graduating in 1906, he enrolled for one year at Harvard Divinity School, then matriculated to Chicago Theological seminary, leaving with his degree in 1916. He received his MA from the University of Chicago in 1917. Moving south he served first as pastor of a small church in rural Illinois, then as principal of the Black Mountain Academy in Evarts, Kentucky, living among the feuding families of the hills. As a missionary he relocated to the Behring Straits, Alaska, where he
rode herd, directing 350 Eskimos and 1500 Wales reindeer. At one point he sailed the Arctic Ocean in a boat made of skins. Desiring to write the Great American Novel, Snell settled for adventure and mystery tales, drawing from his vast storehouse of experience. His work began rolling from the presses at breakneck speed as he often composed 2000 words per hour without an outline. He sold his first manuscript, Little White Fox and His Arctic Friends, in 1916. Many of his novels were first serialized in Boy’s Life, American Boy and The Youth’s Companion. During WW I he spent six months in France with the YMCA, serving as a mechanic. Here he met missionary Lucille Ziegler, whom he married in 1920. During their honeymoon he wrote a book. After the war Snell returned to Wheaton, residing with his family at 705 N. Wheaton Ave. For 20 years during the holidays he worked incognito at Marshall Field’s and Carson’s in Chicago, hand-selling his own titles over-the-counter to unsuspecting customers. Further bolstering book and magazine sales, he lectured annually in Detroit schools about Eskimo ways, struggling into a deerskin parka while demonstrating how to throw harpoons, or how to catch a tame monkey gone wild. “A pan of glue is substituted for water,” he explained. “Mr. Monk washes his face with glue. His eyes are stuck fast together and he is easily caught.”
By the end of his life Snell had published 82 novels, with over two million sold. “I also wrote something like a thousand Sunday School stories for the David C. Cook Pub. Co. of Elgin,” he matter-of-factly informs the Wheaton College Alumni Association in a 1959 update. Later that year he suffered chest pains and was taken to DuPage Memorial Hospital in Elmhurst. Four days later his earthly odyssey ended. “I’ve had my day,” Snell once told a reporter, “and got out of it exactly what I wanted.” He was survived by his wife and three sons.
Wheaton College has provided intellectual incubation for many prominent theologians, professors and pastors. Surely one of the most brilliant was Zane Clark Hodges. Born in Washington, DC, but raised primarily in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, Hodges attended a Plymouth Brethren assembly with his parents and younger brother because there were no Baptist churches in town. Blessed with a sturdy intellect, he completed fifth and sixth grades in one year. During his high school junior year he became editor-in-chief of the student newspaper while participating in the Debating and Latin clubs. Reading widely, he also enjoyed comic books, which he collected, and played baseball. Hodges accepted Christ’s gift of eternal life at a meeting on the Greenwood Hills Bible Conference grounds in 1946. “Since that time,” he writes in his 1949 Wheaton College application, “I not only embrace the Lord Jesus as my Saviour, but also as the Son of God and the one who keeps me and is coming back, perhaps soon.” During this period he desired to enter the mission field as his life’s work. At college Hodges studied Greek, French and German, and further honed his analytical and oratorial skills with the Beltionian Literary society. The administration noted his poised, modest aspect, along with his industry and efficiency. As a result of his academic prowess he was inducted into the Honor Society. He was graduated in 1954, receiving his BA in Greek. Dr. Clarence Hale, Chairman of the Department of Foreign Languages, prophetically observes on Hodges’s placement form: “[He] is a young man of thoroughly reliable character and very high scholarship. He presents a neat appearance and meets people easily. He gives the promise of becoming a well-trained Bible teacher.” From Wheaton Hodges matriculated to Dallas Theological Seminary (DTS) where he acquired his Th.M. before joining its faculty as professor of New Testament Literature and Exegesis, remaining for 27 years until departing to pursue speaking and writing. Hodges produced commentaries on Hebrews, 1-3 John and James, in addition to writing articles for Bibliotheca Sacra, the scholarly journal for DTS. With Arthur Farstad he co-edited The Greek New Testament According to the Majority Text. 
