Category Archives: Wheaton College Archives

Reflections on Technology

Alumni, Wheaton College Archives

Twenty years ago, the Wheaton Alumni magazine began a series of articles, titled “On My Mind”, in which Wheaton faculty told about their thinking, their research, or their favorite books and people. Head of Public Services John Fawcett ’84 (who worked at Wheaton from 1987-2008) was featured in the Winter 1995 issue.

It’s a rare day that I don’t find an announcement of a new electronic product in my pile of morning mail. CD-ROM databases, multimedia encyclopedias, online journals, World Wide Web pages–just watching all that floats by in the deluge could occupy all of my time. Many of these products are familiar to me, old friends in new guises, like information stairways that have become elevators. For example, an announcement just arrived that Historical Abstracts will eventually be available in its entirety on CD-ROM, all the way back to 1955 (we still have to search it in paper before 1982). Another flier offers us the chance (for a fee!) to search the Encyclopedia Britannica on the Internet. Other resources are tantalizingly experimental, not so predictable–information stairways that are turning into Star Trek transporters: such as a multimedia version of Beethoven’s Ninth–you can follow an analysis of the printed score while listening to the recording. Or the chance that because of congressional budget cuts, the Government Printing Office might cease producing some significant documents in printed form at all; instead, we’d have full text online access the very day they are posted.

Yet in the midst of the excitement of technological novelty, I often entertain this nagging doubt: What does it all mean? Is it possible that the glitz of the “new” beguiles us into believing we’re really making “progress”? Certainly we’re more efficient, faster, more easily quantified. But speed alone does not equal quality, nor data wisdom, nor knowledge character. As Americans, we love the pragmatic, the bold and the different, but we sometimes sacrifice our historical consciousness on the altar of innovation. This realization came home clearly to me during a presentation I recently attended by a codicologist–a scholar who studies manuscripts as cultural artifacts for their historical interest. I was amazed as I watched her open a window on the landscape of fifteenth-century France through the details of a single book its paper quality, its binding, its dedicatory page, even the stitching in its spine! Every age embodies its values in its “books,” whether preserved on vellum, parchment, paper, celluloid, or hard drive. And this embodiment means something.

We’re all familiar with the now widely accepted research that demonstrates that television profoundly shapes children’s learning styles. The MTV-generation perceives differently (for better or for worse) from the comic-book generation. If the medium is indeed the message (a la Marshall McLuhan), then the ascendancy of the computer packs quite a message! Scholars will spend years attempting to comprehend its meaning, but I’m already convinced of one thing: We must never let a computer– as great a blessing as it is when used as a tool–persuade us that cyberspace is ultimate reality. Technology has a curious way of taking on a life of its own. It seems to gain power to control our modes of existence and distract us from the fact that it is only a created thing, ephemeral and vulnerable, fragile. Its “needs” can assume near-personal dimensions.

I’ve often wondered about our culture’s subconscious dependency on electricity, for example. In the shadow of events in Sarajevo, it’s a sobering thought to consider what forms our lives would take if the sophisticated machines we take as life-companions were threatened, Would it be as great a disaster as we imagine? Or might it rend the illusory veil of power that our electronic gadgets seem to give us?

If our fundamental Christian understanding of the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ tells us anything, it is that God does not despise matter, but rather redeems it through His Son. God is concerned not only with the spiritual and the abstract, but also with the physical and the concrete. He is not as interested in compressing space and time (what computers do best!) as He is with filling them. When we assume that sheerly by gaining more control over information we will become better people, we fall into one of the oldest heretical traps: the gnostic hope for salvation through disembodied knowledge. If computers are at all dangerous (and they could be), it would be in part because they contribute to this false hope. On the other hand, to ignore the potential benefits of computers would be to fall into the opposite trap: a failure to properly value technology as a redeemable aspect of the created order.

But what does all this have to do with the task of education? Much in every way! Because God in His fullest revelation of Himself came to us in person, not as a scanned image or an http:// site, our task as educators has primarily to do with persons. We certainly don’t despise our God-given ability to abstract, but we circumscribe it within the bounds of the larger reality of our souls. For me, that means that technological hard- and soft-wares, and all the skills requisite to using them, have to be placed at the service of something greater than themselves–or better, Someone Greater for Truth is a Person. It means that life in the presence of God can encompass the full range of human experience–from the task of mastering Microsoft’s latest Windows release to times of repentance and refreshing such as we experienced in the revival services on campus last spring. As I teach and work in the library, mediating historical artifacts and cutting-edge data-retrieval systems to students and faculty, that’s my challenge and my prayer.

———-

John Fawcett ’84 was the head of public services at Buswell Memorial Library. He received an M.A. in librarianship from the University of Chicago, and completed an M.A. in theological studies at Wheaton. In addition to his work in the Library John taught an introductory research course for students in the history department. He was also involved in ministries of prayer and healing at the Church of the Resurrection of Illinois, where he served as music coordinator. After a long battle with cancer, John William Fawcett died on May 27, 2008 at age 46.

A.W. Tozer & Wheaton College

College-related Publications, Wheaton College Archives

The following passage describes the relationship between A.W. Tozer and Wheaton College and is transcribed from “A Passion for God: The Spiritual Journey of A.W. Tozer” by Lyle Dorsett (Moody 2008).

From 1945 until his death in 1963, Tozer poured seemingly unbounded energy into the younger generation. The Sunday evening services at the church on Union Avenue continued to attract hundreds of students as long as Tozer was there. They came twenty-five miles from Wheaton College, and they drove or took the streetcar from Moody Bible Institute. College-age men and women were eager to listen to an intelligent and articulate speaker who assumed the inerrancy of the Bible and used it to call them to radical obedience.

Tozer’s popularity with students on Sunday nights led to other times of interaction with college-age people. Dr. V. Raymond Edman, President of Wheaton College beginning in 1941, became a close friend to A, W. Tozer. The two men shared many experiences and interests. Edman, born in 1900, was three years younger than Tozer. Bespectacled, balding more than Tozer and slightly heavier, Edman served in the United States Army as an enlisted man in World War I. Whereas Tozer was self-educated, Edman worked his way through university, earning a BA from Boston University in 1922. A Spanish major, Edman developed connections with Dr. Paul Rader when he served as head of the C&MA’s Bible Training Institute in Nyack, New York. Through Rader, Edman connected with the Alliance and after marriage he and his wife went to Ecuador as missionaries. Eventually the Edmans returned to the United States because of Raymond’s health, and he went on to earn an (American History) and a PhD (International Relations) from Clark University in Massachusetts.

In 1937 Dr. Edman joined the faculty at Wheaton College to teach history. In 1941 he was appointed president of the college. Tozer’s name was well known to Edman by the time he we Wheaton, because as a member of the Alliance he had read Tozer’s articles in The Alliance Weekly. The two men met personally by 1940 and became fast friends. Both men understood college women and men and sensed God’s leading to encourage them in their faith. Tozer frequently had Dr. Edman come and preach at Southside Church and he urged the college professor to write for Alliance magazine. Once Edman became president of Wheaton College there was seldom a year that passed–at least until the Tozers moved to Canada in 1959–that the Southside pastor was brought to Wheaton College to speak in chapel.

Tozer shared his pulpit with Raymond Edman, and the latter opened the college podium to Tozer because they manifested almost identical understandings of the Bible. As Alliance men, both fully embraced the denomination’s four pillars of Jesus Christ as Savior Sanctifier, Healer, and Coming King. Beyond this connection, however, both men stood deeply committed to the belief that all born-again Christians are invited by God into a “deeper life” after conversion. Each man had experienced a personal and transformational work of grace after conversion. And while each man knew that the Spirit of Jesus Christ works uniquely with every soul, they nevertheless knew from Scripture, church history, and their personal experience that the Spirit of Jesus Christ desires to continue to grow in and flow through His chosen people in profound, transformational, and God-glorifying ways that are seldom realized by most Christians.

V. Raymond Edman laid out his views on what he saw as the liberating and fulfilling life in a volume titled They Found the Secret (1960). A collective spiritual biography of twenty people, Edman presented cameo portraits and deeper life experiences of notable Christians such as Amy Carmichael and Dwight L. Moody.

Tozer set forth a similar view, albeit not through historical biographies, but in a series of articles he published in the magazine Christian Life that were published in a little book titled Keys to the Deeper Life (1957). Prior to this, Tozer had expressed his views on the ‘deeper life’ in several chapel addresses at Wheaton College–ten in 1952 and one two years later.

Young people loved Tozer in the same way an earlier generation loved D. L. Moody. Like the world-famous nineteenth-century evangelist, Tozer knew how to communicate with young adults, and he had a sacred anointing from the Holy Spirit to reach people’s hearts as well as minds. Like Moody and Edman, Tozer did not push Pentecostal doctrines or the gift of tongues. Instead, people were told that knowing about Jesus Christ, understanding correct doctrine, and being a good student of the Bible are only part of our calling. The Lord wants His people to “know Him” not just “about Him.” in the spirit of John 17:3, eternal life is to know the Father and Jesus Christ whom He has sent. Tozer, like Moody, urged people to enter into a deeper life with Christ. Tozer often spoke these or similar words:

Tens of thousands of believers who pride themselves in their understanding of Romans and Ephesians cannot conceal the sharp spiritual contradiction that exists between their hearts and the heart of Paul. That difference may be stated this way: Paul was seeker and a finder and a seeker still. They seek and find and seek no more. After “accepting” Christ they tend to substitute logic for life and doctrine for experience. For them the truth becomes a veil to hide the face of God; for Paul it was a door into His very Presence… Many today stand by Paul’s doctrine who will not follow him in his passionate yearning for divine reality. Can these be said to be Pauline in any but the most nominal sense?

Tozer went on to explain this further by quoting The Cloud of the Unknowing, which he argued contained a prayer that expresses the core of deeper life teaching:

God, unto whom all hearts be open…and unto whom no secret thing is hid, I beseech Thee so for to cleanse the intent of mine heart with the unspeakable gift of Thy grace, that I may perfectly love Thee and worthily praise Thee. Amen.

Tozer continued:

Who that is truly born of the Spirit, unless he has been prejudiced by wrong teaching, can object to such a thorough cleansing of heart as will enable him perfectly to love God and worthily to praise Him? Yet this is exactly what we mean when we speak about with the “deeper life” experience. Only we mean that it should be literally fulfilled within the heart, not merely accepted by the head.

Words such as these set ablaze the hearts of thousands of young women and men who, admittedly, were longing for something more. Not that they sought emotional highs or spiritual “experiences.” On the contrary, most of the young people at Wheaton College and Moody Bible Institute had encountered enough excesses in the burgeoning Pentecostal movement. This was not their goal. Rather, they wanted to know Jesus Christ better so that they could make Him known to a world of lost and confused souls.

Tozer’s messages to Chicago-area students became famous. Soon he was invited to fundamentalist and evangelical campuses in other places. During the 1940s and 1950s, the Chicago Alliance pastor spoke at St. Paul Bible College (Minnesota) in 1941. He did Spiritual Emphasis Week services at Wheaton College twice in the 1950s, and also at Fort Wayne Bible College (Indiana) in 1948 and 1954, as well as the baccalaureate address at Houghton College (New York) in 1952. He also spoke at Taylor College (Indiana) in 1960 and Nyack College the same year. Wheaton College honored Tozer with an honorary doctorate (LLD) in 1950, and Houghton College bestowed the honorary LLD two years later. Although Tozer never sought to be called “doctor,” he was certainly grateful to be so honored by highly respected Christian colleges like Houghton and Wheaton.

There is no way to measure Tozer’s impact on college people, but the testimonies are nearly legion. Billy Graham remembered going to hear Tozer at the Southside Church several times before he graduated from Wheaton College in 1943, and said he was always deeply blessed, Dr. J. Julius Scott, Professor Emeritus, Wheaton Graduate School, remembered that as a freshman at Wheaton in the early l950s, Tozer’s challenges to “know God Himself,” not just “about God,” left an indelible mark on his soul.23 In the same vein, the late Dr. Bernard King, who graduated from St. Paul Bible College in 1941, said he first met Tozer personally at the college commencement the year we entered World War II. He credited his relationship with Tozer that began at college as being extremely important in his spiritual life and ministry.

Dr. Tozer had a range of influence on high school–age youth that rivaled his impact on college people. He frequently spoke at Youth for Christ rallies on foreign missions and radical commitment to Jesus Christ. Likewise he became one of the most popular speakers at Christian and Missionary Alliance Youth gatherings in places such as New York and Cincinnati, as well as Chicago.

An Instrument of Service

Alumni, College-related Publications, Wheaton College Archives

The following article about Conservatory Professor Gladys Christensen ’49 was featured in the Wheaton College Alumni Magazine in June 1987 and is transcribed below.

An Instrument of Service
by Sue Miller ’82

I can remember as a very young child going up and trying to touch an organ, and the organist, of course, shooed me away very quickly,” recalls Gladys Christensen ’49, professor of music at the Wheaton Conservatory of Music.

In spite of her initial brief encounter with the instrument, Gladys went on to pursue organ study in high school and at Wheaton, eventually earning a master of music degree from Northwestern University. She returned to Wheaton in 1954 for a two-year part-time teaching position. At the end of that time, the Conservatory asked her to join the faculty full time.

After 33 years of teaching organ at Wheaton, Gladys knows what works with students. “I think a good teacher is one who inspires a student to do very well and inspires in him or her a love of the great organ literature, as well as the experience of church service playing.” She enjoys teaching a student who will search out material and research the background of the literature. Her goal is to teach students to be independent of her so they can select a piece of music, register it and play it well. “That is the most exciting kind of teaching because I am bringing out something in that student which doesn’t come easily. It’s a developmental process.”

In addition to teaching solo performance, Gladys has the responsibility of instructing her students in the art of church service playing. “Accompanying is the major part of the organist’s work, rather than solo playing…The accompanimental role is a very tricky one because you are dealing with the individuality of the soloist or the choir. You must enhance and support without overpowering.” Teaching this type of sensitivity is difficult for two reasons: There is no choir, soloist or congregation with which to practice, and Gladys can seldom observe her students on location since service.

Church accompaniment has been a vital part of Gladys’ musical career for over 30 years. During the past school year she has been interim organist for several churches. To enjoy service playing, an organist must develop a philosophy of ministry because “what the organist enjoys playing the most is not what he or she is called upon to do in church. Sometimes you feel a little resistant to the number of hours you have to put into preparing music that is somebody else’s choice. You are imprisoned by another’s taste. I was taught that the church organist is very self-effacing…Flexibility and adaptability are two qualities of a good church organist.”

In spite of the inherent difficulties in service playing, Gladys affirms there is satisfaction in knowing that her playing is an inspiration to people in t worship service. “To lead in worship is a privilege. It’s a two-way street: we worship together.”

Last spring, Gladys took a sabbatical in Europe in order to practice organ technique and to study the literature relevant to the instrument for which it was written. She studied with Lionel Rogg, professor of organ at the Conservatoire de Musique in Geneva, Switzerland. Gladys wanted to become proficient in a technique for the tracker or mechanical action organ. Tracker organs, as opposed to electro-pneumatic organs, were once the only way organs were built, and they have regained the attention in organists in recent years. “With a mechanical action instrument, the organist is actually controlling the speech of the pipe…You do feel immediacy with the tracker organ, which makes it a more responsive action to the artist.”

Another benefit of Professor Christensen’s sabbatical was the opportunity to become acquainted with the French and German instruments for which the literature was composed. “The instruments in their own surrounding reveal the literature,” explains Gladys. When her students are studying, for instance, a piece written in Germany 200 years ago, Gladys can embellish the lesson with her own experience of having played the original (or restored) organ in the composer’s actual church–or one close to it. “More than for any other instrument, the literature of the organ is directly tied to the instrument of the time and country for which it was composed.”

The dual role of scholar and teacher is what keeps Professor Christensen fresh in the classroom. Her joy in the instrument spreads to all those around her.

———-

Gladys Christensen died on November 8, 2011. She served as professor of organ and harpsichord in Wheaton’s Conservatory of Music from 1954 to 1988. Gladys was very well known in the community and was very active in the American Guild of Organists having memberships with the Chicago, North Shore, and Fox Valley Chapters over many years. She was a graduate of the Wheaton College Class of 1949, and Professor of Music Emerita at Wheaton College at the time of her death. During her teaching years at Wheaton, she also taught Church Music, Music Theory, Organ Literature and Pedagogy. She attended many masterclasses throughout the USA and Europe, and studied organ with many of the great teachers of her time. She was well-loved and well-respected throughout many musical circles in Chicagoland. Gladys had asked that memorial gifts be made to the Lester Wheeler Groom Organ Recital Endowment which funds guest organ concerts, as well as student scholarships at Wheaton College. She established the Foundation years ago with the intention that it will continue to support organ music at Wheaton.

Chaplain Pat

Wheaton College Archives

In recent weeks a nondescript box arrived at the Wheaton College Special Collections containing the sermons of Harold LeRoy Patterson, third chaplain of Wheaton College, and affectionately referred to as “Chaplain Pat.” The sermons were originally grouped by subject and stored in a small filing cabinet measuring 12″x10″x16″. They were meticulously organized and written or typed on 4.25″x7″ sheets of paper.

Harold LeRoy Patterson was born in Juniata, Pennsylvania on April 2, 1918 and grew up in a railroad town as a star athlete in track and football. He attended Wheaton College along with his older brother and excelled in wrestling, baseball, and football. He met his future wife, Inez Peterson, from Detroit and the two were married and had three children—Patricia, Linda, and Dale.

He left Wheaton to finish his studies at Gordon College, in Wenham, Massachusetts and then enrolled in Gordon Seminary (now Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary). While at seminary, he took the pastorate at a small church in Milton Mills, New Hampshire. After seminary, he joined the U.S. Army as a chaplain and while serving he attended the Nuremburg Trials in 1946. Returning to the United States, he pastored a church in Saginaw, Michigan, and then moved on to serve a church in Lansing, Michigan, where his preaching and leadership led to the creation of a school and youth outreach ministry. He then moved to South Park Church in Park Ridge, Illinois—just outside Chicago. He spoke at many churches in the Midwest and was a regular guest on religious radio, a prayer-leader for the Chicago Bears and other sports teams. He wrote for local papers and began to write regularly for national evangelical magazines. His wider ministry included flying to and over the Andes Mountains to take Bibles to native peoples in the South American interior and also in India.

In 1973 he returned to Wheaton College to serve as chaplain and was inducted into the inaugural Crusader Sports Hall of Honor class of 1976. In 1982, the Alumni Association named him Alumnus of the Year for Distinguished Service to Alma Mater for his devotion to Wheaton College and commitment to the spiritual and personal growth of Wheaton students, faculty, and staff. He retired to Stuart, Florida where he was a guest minister at several churches and kept up his writing. After a time, he and Inez relocated to Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, and finally to Media, near Philadelphia, where Reverend H. LeRoy “Pat” Patterson ’40, died on March 13, 2011. Upon his death Chaplain Pat’s family established an endowed fund to support chapel programming at Wheaton College.

A fuller biography by Ray Smith ’54 is available here.

C.S. Lewis and the Mennonite

College-related Publications, Wheaton College Archives

The Evangelism and Missions Collection, housed on the third floor of the Billy Graham Center in Special Collections, is largely unknown to most undergraduates. Emphasizing autobiography, biography and denominational histories, its countless pages hold boundless curiosities for the questing researcher.

Recently one such treasure revealed itself. Investigating the history of the Mennonites, a patron randomly pulled J.C. Wenger’s Glimpses of Mennonite History and Doctrine (1947) from the open-access shelves. Perusing the front matter, the researcher was surprised to read the inscription: “To C.S. Lewis, in gratitude. Goshen, Ind. 10-9-47. J.C. Wenger.” John C. Wenger (1910-1995), Mennonite historian and theologian, taught at Goshen College and Goshen Theological Seminary and wrote over 20 books.

Not only was this a book inscribed to C.S. Lewis, but it was sent to him by a renowned church historian, suggesting a relationship between the famed apologist and American Mennonites. But for what was Wenger grateful? wondered the patron. Was there significant interaction between C.S. Lewis and the Mennonites? Were the “plain people” of the Radical Reformation somehow connected to the committed Anglican?

Curious about the history behind this gift from Wenger to Lewis, the patron contacted Goshen College in Goshen, Indiana, inquiring of its archivist as to whether their archive possessed a reciprocal letter from C.S. Lewis to Wenger. Searching the J.C. Wenger collection, the archivist located the actual note that had initially accompanied the book:

Dear Mr. Lewis:

Under separate cover I am venturing to send you my recent book, “Glimpses of Mennonite History and Doctrine,” in the hope that you may find a bit of pleasure in it. Permit me to state that I appreciate tremendously the influence of the good which you are exerting in our modern world.

Very sincerely yours, J.C. Wenger, Goshen College, Goshen, Indiana, U.S.A.

So Wenger was simply thanking Lewis for his Christian testimony, expressed through literature. Lewis, a fellow academic typing from his desk at Magdalen College, Oxford, relays gratitude in a note also filed among the Wenger papers:

Dear. Mr. Wenger:

Many thanks to you for kindly sending me a copy of your “Glimpses.” With all best wishes,

yours sincerely, C.S. Lewis

A sticker in the front flyleaf of Glimpses indicates that it had been shelved among the inventory of Blackwell’s of Oxford, England, where Lewis lived. After Lewis or whomever donated or sold it to the shop, an unknown customer bought the book and so began its trans-Atlantic voyage back to the States and ultimately Wheaton College, possibly falling in and out of many hands throughout the years.

Material housed in the Marion E. Wade Center, which includes writing by Lewis and six other British authors, is the result of deliberate acquisition and is not available for circulation, but this intriguing item arrived quite by accident at some point to a completely separate campus library. Books in the Lewis collection frequently display his penciled notations, indicating concentrated engagement with the material. Since Glimpses of Mennonite History contains no notes, in addition to the fact that it wound up at an Oxford bookstore, we might conclude that his interface with midwestern Mennonite Christianity was short-lived and largely disinterested, though respectful.

And now the Evangelism and Missions Collection awaits your own discoveries.

A Burning and Shining Light

Wheaton College Archives

Campus buildings and rooms are often named in honor of a generous donor, but this does not necessarily mean that the details of the honoree’s life survive the commemoration. In time the name simply becomes associated with the structure rather than the individual. Hugo Wurdack, whose name graces a small auditorium in the eastern colonnade of Edman Chapel, surely deserves his story known.

Born the youngest of seven on a farm in Missouri in 1871, Wurdack accepted Christ as his Savior at the age of 18 and dedicated his life to serving the Lord, attending Life Congregational Church. He and his brother, William, pioneered in the electrical industry while in their teens. Together they built the first electric light plant in St. Louis in 1888. Hugo built the second plant and installed electric lights in several of the downtown buildings. Eventually Wurdack entered the utility business and established a chain of companies, electrifying towns in 12 states and 40 municipalities. Later he sold these and devoted himself to manufacturing air conditioning equipment. In addition to business, he was a devout Christian and earnest personal worker. Wurdack was elected to the Wheaton College board of trustees on June 14, 1927. He would serve the college under three presidents: Charles Blanchard, J. Oliver Buswell and V. Raymond Edman. In June 1951 Wurdack was granted the honorary Doctor of Law degree from Wheaton College. One of Wurdack’s convictions was to honor the Lord with a tithe of all his earnings and time. In his will he gave full credit to this principle as the chief reason for his success. Shortly after the construction of Edman Chapel, the Williamsburg Prayer Chapel at the east end of the building was renamed “The Wurdack Chapel,” recognizing the venerable entrepreneur’s stellar stewarship.

He and his wife, Evelyn, had no children. Wurdack died during the night of September 11th, 1963. He was 92, one of the oldest trustees in the college’s history. After his death, Billy Graham assumed his seat on the board of trustees. Dr. Edman, delivering the eulogy, chose a text which described Wurdack’s contribution to his generation in both the realms of business and spirit: “He was a burning and a shining light…” (John 5:35).

Wurdack Chapel was funded by a grant from the S.S. Kresge Foundation.

A myth understanding

Wheaton College Archives

As organizations grow and age they soon acquire various myths or legends that attach themselves to the organization and become a part of its heritage and lore. For Wheaton College this is no different. Many Wheatonites, if asked, could readily cite one or two of these myths and the first would most likely have to do with Wheaton College and the Underground Railroad. For those not in the know, for decades it was purported that Wheaton College was a stop on the Underground Railroad. Supported by Wheaton’s history as an abolitionist school, for many years there was no “hard” evidence to support this myth. As reported in this blog, evidence is now known and this myth moved to the fact category.

Other myths that are associated with Wheaton College range from the mundane to the bizarre. Myths are perpetuated and maintain a life of their own because they often contain some elements of truth or plausibility. One such mundane myth is that the Billy Graham Center is sinking. The rates and speed often vary, but the myth states that the Graham Center was built on an ancient aquifer that was naturally swampy (true). Since the BGC is so large and weighty it is too much for this hydric soil. Billy Graham CenterThe land around the BGC naturally attracts water and the adjacent parking area has been known to flood in heavy rains, stranding and ruining dozens of vehicles over the years. Novice historians will note that when the land was cleared and prepped for construction that air hammers rammed dozens and dozens of telephone poles into the soil to serve as pylons for the massive new structure (true). Myth has it that the pylons are decaying and the building is sinking at the rate of an inch or so a year. This all sounds well and good. It seems plausible. Yet, when one brings mathematics into the equation it quickly calls into question the veracity of the myth. If the BGC was opened in 1980 and it is sinking an inch a year then it would have moved 32 inches deeper into the ground. That’s nearly 3 feet! Even if the rate of sinkage was one-eighth inch it would translate to a building that is four inches lower than when it was built. This is half of a step, something we all would notice.

Another myth that continues to capture the attention of students for many decades is the existence of a secret satanic library in “attic” of the Billy Graham Center. When the fifth floor of the Billy Graham Center was used for storage and off-limits students would sneak onto the floor in search of the legendary occult library. Does or did such a library exist? Yes and no.

From 1974 to 2004 the Billy Graham Center operated a library as an extension of its mission. This library, like the museum and Graham Archives, collected materials related to missions and evangelism. In the course of its work it received a large donation of books on cults and the occult from a scholar. The Graham library placed the donation in boxes in a storage cage on the top floor of the Graham Center until they determined what to do with this gift. After several years other priorities took hold and the donation remained untouched. To exacerbate the delays further in 1997 the staff of the Graham library was reduced significantly due to funding shortfalls.

In 2004 further budgetary issues caused the remaining Graham library staff to be let go. At that time the staff of Buswell Memorial Library became responsible for the collections of the Billy Graham Center Library and Buswell’s collection development librarian soon began going through the backlog of the Graham library including the languishing “secret” donation. The quality of the collection was inconsistent and some of volumes were not suitable for addition to the college’s collection. Others were deemed outside of the curricular needs or research interests. Useful books were cataloged and added to Buswell Library’s collections and shelves. And, others were deemed unsuitable for retention. It was some of these latter titles that were the most provocative and intriguing to the eyes of students as they sneaked around and peered into the storage cage. Some of these title were related to the occult and occult practices.

So, was there an “occult library?” Yes, sort of. Was it secret? No. Did it allow for really spooky fun? Just ask the dozens of students who made their way to the storage cage or who keep the story alive.

Other myths include slave tunnels around Blanchard Hall and, even, horses being buried behind Blanchard. There are myths related to notable individuals, such as Wes Craven lived on Elm St. while living in Wheaton, thus helping to inspire the title of his noted horror film. With myths the only limit is the limits on one’s imagination.

Blanchard Hill Gang

Alumni, Wheaton College Archives

Over seventy years ago an incident transpired that involved a greased pig and a future president of Wheaton College. The event was recounted in the April 25, 1980 edition of the Record student newspaper and is transcribed below.

Blanchard Hill Gang caught on pig count
by Bill Gianopulos

April Fools’ morning, you are reading the large black and white poster attached to a tree on the front lawn of Blanchard.

“WANTED: The Blanchard Hill Gang on suspicion of harboring a subversive element. REWARD: The first person to come forward with information as to the identity and whereabouts of these desperados gets to chase the first pig at honors convocation.”

“The offer is irresistible,” you think. After rereading the poster you carefully analyze the attached photograph. “Nothing special,” you think. “Just five men standing around an ugly pig.” You eye the photo again. “That guy looks familiar.” You try to repress the thought. “Is that Dr. Armerding? He’s that close to a pig — and still smiling?” The poster, which still remains a mystery to most Wheaton students portrays five seniors from the class of ’41. Joe Bayly, Senior Sneak Chairman, is on the far left. Next to him stands Al Fesmire, coordinator of the Tower concerts. David Roberts, senior class president, stands behind the pig holding the leash. Hudson Armerding, class treasurer, kneels behind the pig and Jim Pass [kneels] on the far right.

The Blanchard Hill Gang incident of May 1941, climaxed a year of vigorous class competition between juniors and seniors. Back then, everyone knew the seniors by their orange and blue jackets with the “Class of ’41” seal emblazoned over the left pocket. Men and women sported their senior jackets. “That was considered real class, ” Roberts, now assistant to President Armerding said. On Wednesday, May 14, 1941, the junior class sponsored an all-school “Rodeo Round-up, ” with free stage coach rides, lemonade, Western vittles, and a free cowboy whip for every junior. Decked out in bandanas, ten-gallon hats, boots, and chaps the juniors trotted to Pierce [Chapel]’s “chuck wagon” at 7:15 for a ham and egg breakfast. The faculty matched their pie-throwing ability with the student body in the pie-face race at noon. At 4 p.m. the rip-roaring rodeo moved into the spotlight at Lawson Field. Parades, medicine shows, and hog-calling took top billing.

But the greased pig scramble was to climax the day’s events.

The Blanchard Hill Gang, “never outdone by infantile juniors,” did their best to spoil the climax. As Roberts puts it, “We wanted the biggest impact with the least disruption.” On Tuesday, the eve of the rodeo, the Gang frantically searched for the pig. They found it in a faculty member’s garage. One member reached for the door hinge and yanked out the pin securing the door. The wind blew the door open and the pig waddled out and into the street. “We didn’t want the pig run over by a car, ” Roberts says half sarcastically. He remembers the five of them throwing the pig into the back seat of Fesmire’s car and driving to a farm a few miles south of campus. An accomplice snapped the photo which appears on the poster. “After the picture was taken, we boarded out the pig until the next days’ events were over,” Roberts recalls. “The junior class council went to the garage Wednesday morning to grease the pig. But the pig was gone.” Roberts chuckles as he recalls Fesmire’s attempt to deodorize the back seat of this car. “It smelled like a pig farm,” he says. “He washed, hosed, and sunned the seat to get rid of the pig odor but he couldn’t. Fesmire sold the car. “I learned one thing,” says Roberts. “When I saw that poster last week I realized that the evil men do, lives after them.”

What can we learn from this? First, even college presidents were once college students and are not beyond pig pranking. Second, it is obvious that the evolutionary consciousness of pig pranking has become more devious in recent years. In 167 B.C. Antiochus Epiphanes entered Jerusalem and defiled the temple by pouring swine blood on the altar. Last year history almost repeated itself in Edman Chapel at the Spring Honors Convocation.

A Merry Merrill Tenney Christmas

Books, College-related Publications, Wheaton College Archives

This fine bit of Christology from Dr. Merrill Tenney, former Dean of the Wheaton College Graduate School, appeared in the December, 1958, Alumni Magazine.

Merrill TenneyIn the obscurity of a stable in a cave in Bethlehem of Judea there occurred one of the most ordinary events of history: a baby was born. Nothing could be less spectacular; it is as common as mankind. Every one of us who now lives entered this world by that same gateway, so that this baby was no exception. He did not come from an aristocratic family. Mary, his mother, though of good ancestry, was of Galilean peasant stock, and her husband, Joseph, was a village carpenter. Both were well known to all their neighbors as good but ordinary people, probably neither better nor worse than the average. They had neither power, nor wealth, nor influence. No particular notice was taken of the baby’s arrival, and there was no celebration in His honor. The populace of Bethlehem did not know that He existed.

Nevertheless, His birth was a landmark in the history of the world that marked a change in the very method of reckoning time, and that changed the course of empire. While the fact of His birth was not extraordinary, the nature of His birth most certainly was, for both of the Gospels that describe it assert unequivocally that He was born of a virgin. Mary, His mother, officially betrothed to Joseph, but the marriage had not been consummated before He was born. The accounts tell us that His birth was announced by an angelic messenger, and that the Holy Spirit so came upon Mary that her child was called “the Son of God” (Luke 1:35), and the celestial hosts who appeared to the shepherds in the fields of Bethlehem sang of “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men,” when He entered the world.

This mingling of the supernatural and the natural, of deity and humanity is the miracle of Christmas. God has entered into the experience of humanity not as a casual visitor, but as a partaker of our flesh will all its limitations and sorrow. “He was in all points tempted like as we are.” Nevertheless, he was not just a victim of fate, for through the vehicle of the human body He labored, taught, died and rose that He might reveal the nature of God to men, and that He might fulfill God’s purpose in saving them. The miracle of Christmas is that in the coming of Jesus, God made himself our Redeemer, and that in the ordinary process of birth a new and supernatural power entered human life. Because He is both God and man, He is able to destroy death and to give eternal deliverance from fear and failure.

The Third Man Factor

Alumni, College-related Publications, Wheaton College Archives

We know the names of the great. But there are those who, as influential as any statesman, author or inventor, step in and out of history. Amazingly, their identity remains totally unknown.

One such figure appears in the Bible, Daniel 3:16-28. King Nebuchadnezzar did not appreciate the fact that his captives, “certain Jews,” Shadrach, Meschach and Abednego, refused to worship the golden image he had provided, so he ordered the boys bound and thrown into a blazing furnace. Looking into the pit, the king saw another figure. “Lo, I see four men loose,” he told his confused counselors, “walking in the midst of the fire, and they have no hurt; and the form of the fourth is like the Son of God.” The king concluded that God had sent an angel to protect the three Jewish boys.

One day in the mountains of Tibet missionaries Bob Ekvall and Ed Carlson (both graduates of Wheaton College) were riding their horses. Fully aware that larger packs of marauders might overtake a smaller groups, both carried rifles and knew how to use them. Though Ekvall never killed a man, he stated that he had shot the horses out from under a few. As Carlson and Ekvall rode up a remote pass, they saw in the distance several men on horseback galloping toward them, obviously plotting an assault. Suddenly the would-be bandits stopped and retreated. Later, Ekvall came across one of the men and asked why they had ridden away so hastily. “You outnumbered us,” he replied. “We weren’t afraid of you. We weren’t afraid of your friend. But who was that shining one with you?” Ekvall was understandably baffled.

Encountering apparitions was new to Ekvall and Carlson, but it is not so to the human experience. John Geiger, author of The Third Man Factor (2009) chronicles several such visitations. A few instances from the book illustrate:

Sir Ernest Shackleton, during his 1916 expedition to the South Pole, ordered his crew to abandon their ice-battered vessel, Endurance, and trek across breaking floes and frozen tundra, desperately searching for the shelter of a whaling station. Traversing mile after agonizing mile over glaciers and unnamed mountains, Shackleton and his starved, exhausted men at last reached their destination. Later, the explorer admitted that he and his companions, each without telling the other, had experienced the acute sense of a comforting, protective presence guiding them. In lectures he spoke of the event, but declined to elaborate. “None of us cares to speak about that,” he told an interviewer. “There are some things which can never be spoken of. Almost to hint about them comes perilously near to sacrilege. This experience was eminently one of those things.”

During his historic 1927 transatlantic flight from New York to Paris, Charles Lindbergh, piloting the Spirit of St. Louis, flew into explosive thunderstorms and blinding fog, drifting with each mile ever closer to sleep. To keep awake, he doused himself with cold rainwater. During the twenty-second hour of his voyage Lindbergh sensed other presences aboard the craft. These “phantoms,” he wrote, were there to assist, “conversing and advising on my flight, discussing problems of my navigation, reassuring me, giving me messages of importance unattainable in ordinary life.” The famed aviator did not discuss this until nearly three decades after the flight. He remembered “transparent forms in human outline,” but stated, “I can’t remember a single word they said.”

On 911 during the terrorist attack on the Twin Towers, at least one documented report told of an unknown rescuer suddenly appearing amid the chaos to lead desperate office workers to safety through thick smoke and falling debris.

Though necessary to survival, Geiger says, the Third Man is not “real” as a physical manifestation. He believes that each human brain carries an “angel switch,” a brain response activated by extreme and unusual circumstances. The Third Man may be explained neurologically, he suggests, but this does not answer “why” he appears. Ultimately, the Third Man is an instrument of hope.

The prophet Daniel, Robert Ekvall, Ernest Shackleton, Charles Lindbergh and many others throughout history would surely agree with Geiger that the Third Man is an instrument of hope, but would wholeheartedly disagree that he is not real. Something unreal cannot lead a dying man to safety, just as a starving man cannot eat unreal food that suddenly appears on his plate. Who or whatever the identity of the Third Man, he religiously keeps his appointments.

A painting depicting Ekvall’s encounter, “Who Was That Shining One?” by DeWitt Whistler Jayne, is displayed in the Special Collections reading room on the third floor of the Billy Graham Center.