It is rightly declared that behind every great man stands a great woman. Considering the academic community, it is also a fact that behind every man and woman, great or not – whether president, provost, professor, registrar, student, janitor or cook – stands the chairman of the board of trustees, quietly holding all operations with a determined hand. Often his name is not recognized by the larger campus.

At Wheaton College this position was held for a remarkable 43 years by Herman A. Fischer, Jr. Herman was one of twelve children born to Herman A. Fischer, Sr., who instructed math at the college for 50 years, and Julia Blanchard Fischer, daughter of Jonathan Blanchard, first president of Wheaton College. Fisher, Jr., after graduating from Wheaton, taught mathematics for two years at Wabash High School in Indiana before enrolling at Harvard Law School, receiving his Doctor of Jurisprudence in 1908. Returning to Chicago with his license, he practiced for 65 years with the firm Campbell, Clithero, Fischer and Guy. Dr. Charles Blanchard, second president of Wheaton College, shortly before his death in 1926, proposed that his nephew, Herman, be appointed as a trustee. A year later he was elected chairman, heading the board until his retirement in 1970 when it awarded him a plaque stating that he had “…demonstrated uncompromising fairness and integrity, shared unusually wise counsel, manifested consideration for varying viewpoints and showed exemplary faithfulness to Jesus Christ and the cause of higher education.” Robert E. Nicholas, fellow trustee, added that the venerable chairman was “…a man of action, who wastes no time in getting down to business…[he] is one of the most capable men I have ever known.” Herman exhibited durable leadership elsewhere, as well. From 1932 to 1953 he served as president of Gary-Wheaton Bank, continuing as chairman of its board until 1966. He led as officer and director of the Cuneo Press from 1919 to 1973. He was a member of the board of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship and also the Billy Graham Crusades. For relaxation, he enjoyed membership at the prestigious Union League Club and the Chicago Golf Club. Fischer Hall dormitory, on the campus of Wheaton College, is named in honor of both senior and junior. A lifelong bachelor, Herman died in 1974 at Delnor Hospital, St. Charles, at age 91. Billy Graham sent condolences:

There was a glorious reunion in Heaven when Herman Fischer swept through its glorious gates. His powerful leadership was possibly the greatest single factor that kept Wheaton College spiritually balanced, financially sound with academic excellence during the last half century. All of us who have benefited from Wheaton’s influence owe him an enormous debt. Please convey to his personal family and to the Wheaton family my appreciation and thankfulness for the life of Herman Fischer.

The funeral, conducted at College Church where Herman Fischer, Jr. served as chairman of the board of trustees, adult Bible class teacher and Sunday School superintendent, was officiated by Chaplain Evan Welsh, Dr. Hudson Armerding and Pastor Nathan Goff.

Wheaton College is proud to have one of its own participating in the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, British Columbia. Speedskater Nancy Swider-Peltz, Jr., the daughter of Jeff Peltz ’81 (college postmaster, football coach), sister of Jeffrey Peltz (Class of 2013), granddaughter of Donna Peltz (financial aid), and niece of Mike Swider ’77 (Head football coach) will be participating in the Women’s 3000m and Team Pursuit [WATCH quarterfinal win against Canada and semifinal loss against Germany]. The Peltz family is no stranger to the ice as Nancy follows in the footsteps of her mother and coach, four-time Olympian and 1981 Wheaton alumna Nancy Swider-Peltz, Sr. who was a member of the U.S. Olympic Speedskating Team in 1976 (Innsbruck, Austria), 1980 (Lake Placid, New York–USA), 1984 (Sarajevo, former Yugoslavia), and 1988 (Calgary, Alberta–Canada).

*Born and raised in Park Ridge, IL, Nancy Swider was introduced to speedskating at age six and by twelve was racing competitively across the state. During her time at Maine South High School she won national championships in both short and long track pack-style racing. After spending the fall quarter of 1974 at Wheaton College, Nancy pursued her Olympic aspirations by taking time off from school to train and compete in Europe. The experience paid off in an Olympic team berth the following winter and a seventh place finish in the 3000-meter race at the 1976 Innsbruck Games. The difference between Olympic gold and Nancy’s seventh place finish was two-and-a-half seconds. Shortly after the Olympics, Nancy cemented her place among the sport’s elite by breaking her first world record in the 3000 meters by four seconds. Nancy continued her involvement in skating for the next three years by attending Wheaton College during the fall, spring and summer quarters, and traveling to Europe to race in the winters. She secured her second world record in the 10,000m during 1980 and made her second Olympic team to Lake Placid as an alternate. Nancy retired from skating and returned to college to finish her education. She soon emerged from retirement and returned to full-scale training to secure a spot on the U.S. team at the 1983 World Championships.

An incident during that come-back year gives insight into her character and determination. On the morning that she was to fly to Europe for six weeks of training, Nancy squeezed in a final work-out on roller blades in a large parking lot near O’Hare Airport. As she glided around a makeshift track, marked off by tennis shoes, she was distracted and caught a roller blade on one of her markers, taking a nasty fall onto bare asphalt. Her injuries were diagnosed as a fractured chin and jaw and several broken teeth, but after receiving a few stitches, she still caught her flight, three hours after the accident. With the condition of her jaw, Nancy was forced to mash her food the entire six weeks, waiting until after her trip to have her teeth fixed.

Swider’s perseverance was rewarded with an Olympic-sized prize as she competed in two races in the 1984 Sarajevo Games, finishing eighteenth in the 1500 meters and tenth in the 3000 meters, and again, Nancy retired from skating after the Olympics. In 1985 she married Jeff Peltz ’81, who had become an active member of her support team. While Jeff was running the Wheaton College Post Office and coaching football, Nancy began to work with the U.S. Speedskating Association. By using her experience to coach young skaters, two of her own pupils would become her 1988 Olympic teammates. When Jeff and Nancy’s nine-plus pound daughter, Nancy Jr., arrived by cesarean section in January 1987, a spot on the Olympic team and coming out of retirement (again) seemed out of the question. The Olympic team selection was only eleven months away, nevertheless, Nancy (Sr.) began to bicycle and swim, placing third in the Crystal Lake Triathlon later that August. By October she had lined up financial sponsors and, with her recently retired father as coach, was off to Calgary with the baby to get in some ice time on the world’s only 400-meter indoor skating oval.

Upon her qualification for the 1988 Winter Games in Calgary, Nancy Swider-Peltz became the first American in history to qualify for four Olympic Winter Games. In between world-class competitions and breast feeding Nancy Jr., mother and daughter were one of the frequent human interest stories of the 1988 Calgary Winter Games featured on ABC’s Olympic coverage, “Good Morning America” program and in Time magazine, USA Today and numerous other publications.

In 1992 Nancy, Sr. was inducted into the Wheaton College Athletic Hall of Honor where in addition to her Olympic accomplishments; she was recognized for earning All-American honors in five swimming events during her senior year (the only complete year she spent on campus). Nancy Swider-Peltz is also a member of the National Speedskating Hall of Fame.

[*excerpted from Wheaton Alumni magazine, May 1988]

Twenty-two years later, Nancy Swider-Peltz, Jr. has returned to Canada as a first-time Olympian herself, as part of the United States Speedskating Team. On Valentine’s Day she placed 9th in the Women’s 3000m in her Olympic debut. Exceeding her own expectations, she was the top American in the event. In her own words “It’s a great accomplishment…All that hard work paid off. It was the best race of my life.” [Watch]

David Iglesias has been one of Wheaton’s alumni who have hit the broader news on occasion, especially more recently. He is known for several things, such as being the inspiration for Tom Cruise’s character Lt. Daniel Kaffee in A Few Good Men, a writer, and a United States Attorney (later fired in a political firestorm), however poet has never been listed among his credits. Before this.

While a student at Wheaton College Iglesias wrote a poem that was published in Wheaton’s Kodon literary magazine.

The Lawn Sitting Laotian Woman
David Iglesias

Squatting Buddha and
pretzel-like, the Laotian
woman remains passive,
unaware of her
manicured lawn.

Her turban hides
thoughts of steamy Laotian
nights,
and yellow parchment
eyes see past the colonial
brick buildings
to
pictures of huts, chickens,
slash and burn sunsets,

While others wear rouge
(Revlon), she thinks of
Khmer and blood.

Pipe going, eyes Mekong-
ward, the Laotian woman
squats by the hour and
blinks.

Andrew Chignell’s article, Whither Wheaton?, appearing in SoMA (The Society of Mutual Autopsy), is proving to be rather provocative, especially as it garners attention for its content as well as its “backstory.” In attempting to provide a guide for the future by looking to Wheaton’s past (more accurately, “near-past”), Chignell reviews the presidency of A. Duane Litfin and his near 17-year tenure. Chignell’s efforts at dissecting Wheaton College’s history is not new, though his particular focus is. Histories and studies of Wheaton College have been written — some official or semi-official, Fire on the Prairie (1950) and Wheaton College: A Heritage Remembered (1984); some very specialized, Edwin Hollatz’s The Development of Literary Societies in Selected Illinois Colleges (1959), Randall Dattoli’s The Wheaton Graduate School (1936-1971): its history and contributions (1980), Lori Witt’s More than a ‘Slaving Wife’ (2001) (examining women at conservative Protestant colleges) and David Swartz’s The Evolution of Creationism at Wheaton College (1999); some focusing upon students and student culture, John Furbay’s Undergraduates in a Group of Evangelical Christian Colleges (1931), John Swanson’s The Graduates of a Midwestern Liberal Arts College Evaluate Their Experiences (1957) and Kevin Cumings’ Student Culture at Wheaton College (1997). These dissertations are also accompanied by numerous masters theses research on Wheaton College. Each title sheds light on what appears to be a monolithic institution; but as Chignell illustrates, Wheaton College exhibits a breadth of perspective involving nuances too often lost on “outsiders.”

Other historical works helping to reinforce Chignell’s article are found in Wheaton’s Archives & Special Collections. Each of the following are doctoral dissertations, representing research conducted prior to the installation of Litfin as president.

Tom Askew’s 1969 dissertation, Liberal Arts College Encounters Intellectual Change: A Comparative Study of Education at Knox and Wheaton Colleges, 1837-1925 investigates the intellectual life of two colleges led by Jonathan Blanchard, Wheaton’s founder. Blanchard had been Knox’s second (and now relatively little-known) president and Wheaton’s first (though the Illinois Institute had been around for seven years). Askew analyzes how Knox and Wheaton reacted to the tides of intellectual change. His work clearly shows how the president can be a defining and, at times, a polarizing figure, as so with Knox.

Examining Wheaton College and two other colleges, David Larsen’s Evangelical Christian Higher Education, Culture, and Social Conflict: a Niebuhrian Analysis of Three Colleges in the 1960s (1992) discusses Wheaton’s efforts to preserve “elements of the organization’s culture and history in the face of social change” (p. 201). Larsen notes “the place of tradition and the unusual power of the Wheaton presidency for shaping the organizational culture and history” (p. 202). Larsen documents the emergence of public dissent and the growth of underground publications at Wheaton College. The writer also analyzes views on social conflict and justice at Wheaton.

Michael Hamilton, former director of the Pew Young Scholars program that birthed Chignell’s graduate career, wrote The Fundamentalist Harvard: Wheaton College and the Continuing Vitality of American Evangelicalism, 1919-1965 (1994). Hamilton, using Wheaton College as an exemplar, charts its course as the modernist controversy catalyzes the fundamentalist movement, then discusses its emergence and solidification during post-war Evangelicalism as the pinnacle of Evangelical higher education, advancing the principles of faith(ful) integration.

An interesting addition to these dissertations is Citadel Under Siege: The Contested Mission of an Evangelical Christian Liberal Arts College by David Lansdale, a 1990 PhD graduate of Stanford University. Based on archival research and personal interviews (conducted on-site, while supposedly living in his van). An oversimplification, Lansdale’s thesis advances that tensions exist (at any college) between faculty and trustees. This occurs because faculty hold a responsibility to broaden the vision of its students, while trustees must chart and maintain a course. At times these two functions conflict, though not necessarily so. Lansdale’s thesis suggests that Wheaton’s faculty were a liberalizing force and that the trustees would need to counter that force in order to maintain a path of its choosing. This dissertation was circulating on Wheaton’s campus around the time of the presidential search process in the early 1990s.

Chignell’s article tells one aspect of Wheaton’s history over the last twenty years. The works mentioned above further illuminate Chignell’s work and the college’s past. This is certainly not the last word on Wheaton. May Truth ever be sought as scholars engage the historical record.