In celebration of Wheaton College’s 150th anniversary, a Sesquicentennial Gala is being hosted on campus. *The tradition of the Washington Banquet dates back to 1909, on the centennial of Lincoln’s birthday. From then on, it was held on Washington’s birthday, as was originally intended. Dr. Benjamin VanRiper, head of the chemistry department at that time, suggested the banquet. The impetus behind the idea was to have one time each year when faculty and students would get together as a family for an evening of fellowship and festivity. The programs of the early banquets included class speeches, yells, songs, toasts, and dinner. The February 23, 1927, issue of The Wheaton Record reports that the “banquet is a time for exhibiting a maximum amount of class spirit.” The highlight of the banquet was to see which class could decorate the gaudiest and yell the loudest. So serious was the competition between classes, and so prime was the time for pranks that often the class orator would mysteriously disappear before the banquet. The identity of the orators had to be kept secret, lest they be kidnapped by members of another class. The Washington Banquet of 1912 has gone down in history as one of the more memorable. Professor Homer Helmick of the chemistry department oversaw the decorating committee that year. He turned the College into a brightly-colored city of lights, collecting and decorating with all the Christmas tree lights in the neighborhood and on Woolworth’s shelves. In 1938, the character of the Washington Banquet changed, taking on a more dignified air. Class talks were eliminated, there was less class rivalry, and dress became more formal. It was that year that the tradition of having a faculty member and his spouse dress up as George and Martha Washington was started.

*[first published in Wheaton Alumni magazine, Spring 1995]

Among the extraordinary individuals who have contributed to the soul of Wheaton College, few were as seasoned as Warren Wyeth Willard. His first book, Steeple Jim, about an alcoholic brawler turned born-again Christian, appeared in 1929 when he was twenty-four. Graduating from Brown University and Princeton Theological Seminary (where he studied under Dr. J. Gresham Machen), Willard had already distinguished himself as an author, businessman, pastor and founder of Camp Good News in Forestdale, MA, before volunteering as a chaplain during WW II. Ministering to spiritually needy soldiers, he landed in 1943 with the 2nd Marine division at the battle at Guadalcanal, and was awarded the Legion of Honor Medal for his service to them during the battle at Tarawa in the Gilbert Islands. According to one report he was “…credited with serving more consecutive days under constant enemy fire than any chaplain in the history of the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps.” In 1944 he was awarded the Legion of Merit, the Navy’s highest honor. Lieutenant Willard’s stirring wartime chronicle, The Leathernecks Come Through, brought him national fame; and in February, 1944, he was invited by Wheaton College to deliver its mid-winter evangelistic services. So impressed were staff and students with this heroic 39-year-old, that it was decided to hire him as Director of Evangelism and Assistant to President V. Raymond Edman. Willard, moving his wife, Grace, and their children from Cape Cod to 821 Irving Avenue, settled easily into his administrative responsibilities. He offers a candid glimpse:

I could write another book entitled, “My Five Years at Wheaton College”…What were my duties as “Assistant to the President?” Just that – assisting the president. And believe me, by the grace of God, I was a faithful one. Modesty prevents me from using more descriptive words.

As I came to know him at private devotions held each morning in his office, then through conferences which followed these devotions, by observing his far-reaching influence on the student body, I was glad to give him my whole-hearted support. I had been indoctrinated in the Navy with the slogans of “Loyalty up and loyalty down” and “All for one and one for all.” It was easy to be loyal to Dr. Edman. As we daily walked together across the campus for the college chapel worship services, he would greet a hundred students and call them by their first names. He counseled with them in his office as would a father. There was a quiet dignity, sympathy and pathos in his voice as he led them into the deep things of God. He loved them all as though they were his sons and daughters. After they had graduated, he followed them as a guardian angel…

Aside from preaching challenging messages to the campus, Willard raised funds for Wheaton Academy and recruited members for the Board of Trustees. Edman also tasked him with writing the first formal history of the college, Fire on the Prairie (1950). In 1951, the self-described “old goat of 46 years,” seeking to sharpen his reasoning skills, departed Wheaton to study law at Northwestern University in Chicago, there earning his Doctor of Jurisprudence. But the pulpit called him away from a legal career, and he returned to the ministry as pastor of Third Baptist Church in Barnstable on Cape Cod. “What a delightful four years were spent serving in this quaint little church!” he recalls. Then, in 1960, he was unanimously called to First Presbyterian Church of Waltham, MA, where he served for 22 years before retiring. The concluding sentiment of his memoir, Confessions of a Minister (1975), humbly recognizes the immovable northstar of his life:

In my early teens, when I began to read daily from the New Testament and understand its message, something happened in my heart. I fell in love with Jesus Christ. From that day to this, I have loved him and attempted to serve him with all the passion and intensity of my soul. So may it be until the day I die – a death that will have no sting, a grave that will have no victory. For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain (Philippians 1:21 RSV).

He died in 2000 at age 94 in Sandwich, Massachusetts.

Canadian Bruce Wallace Dunn, responding to a question on his Wheaton College application regarding his choice for location after graduation, wrote, “California – otherwise no preference.” As it happened, Dunn’s career did not move him westward but straight south to Peoria, Illinois. As road-weary vaudevillians used to say, “If it’ll play in Peoria, it’ll play anywhere.” There Dunn’s fruitful ministry “played” for decades not because of chance, but as the result of, as he observed, “…many prayers, much planning, and sacrificial giving by hundreds of people.” Born to a godly family of Scottish heritage in Toronto, Ontario, Dunn was the first boy in Dr. Oswald Smith’s Sunday School class at the famous People’s Church. Regularly attending for years but still unsure of his beliefs, Dunn finally walked the aisle in 1936, publicly declaring his faith in Christ after hearing former hoodlum Anthony Zeoli testify to God’s grace.

Offering his life to God, Dunn enrolled at Wheaton College where he robustly participated in campus life, involved with cheerleading, tennis, ping pong and the Aristonian Literary Society. In addition to sports, he reported for the Record, traveled with the Ambassadors (Wheaton’s musical evangelists) and served on the Men’s Interhouse Council. Earning his B.A. (’40) and M.A. (’46), he transferred to McCormick Seminary in Chicago and then Northern Baptist Theological Seminary, where he acquired his Th.D. After serving briefly in Iowa, Wisconsin and Chicago, Dunn in 1951 accepted a call to pastor at Grace Presbyterian in Peoria. A few months later he inaugurated a radio broadcast, later moving his congregation to a larger building and a successful television ministry called Grace Worship Hour. He enjoyed a national reputation as a powerful speaker, preaching for conferences like Moody Founder’s Week, Moody Keswick, Winona Lake, West Coast Prophetic Congress and many others. Specializing in prophetic interpretation, he stressed the need for continual evangelization.

Occasionally his sermons were published as pamphlets, such as The Ecumenical Dream…One Big Church!, reflecting his alarm over ill-considered ecclesiastical mergers and unions. In 1960 Wheaton College awarded him its Centennial Award for his uncompromising testimony; and in 1968 he delivered the Baccalaurate address for Taylor University. Dunn’s wife, Eileen, graduating summa cum laude from Wheaton College in 1947, was employed as a librarian at Bradley University for 25 years. She died in 1989, her graveside service occurring on the 48th anniversary of their wedding. Dr. Bruce Dunn retired from Grace Presbyterian in 1991, continuing with writing and periodic speaking engagements until his death in 1993. His funeral address was delivered at Grace Presbyterian Church by Dr. Joseph Stowell, president of Moody Bible Institute.

In the first installment of a three volume anthology of the history of athletics at Wheaton College, Through Clouds and Sunshine: A Story of Wheaton College Athletics from the Beginning (1892-1940), Edward Coray recounts the early endeavors of securing football at the school. Insights are also found another book by Coach Coray, The Wheaton I Remember.

Wheaton College Football, 1919 (Ed Coray, back row 4th from right)

President Charles Blanchard for a long time put football in the same category as gambling and hard liquor. To understand this, one needs to know something of Dr. Blanchard’s personality and character. A gentle man who loved the young people of Wheaton, he hated to think of any of these fine young men being involved in a sport where people might be maimed for life or even killed [note: a real possibility in the early days of football]. In addition the majority denounced the sport as brutal. So the administration and faculty members at Wheaton did not stand alone in being skeptical of the sport.

In 1906 radical rule changes made football a more open game and less susceptible to injuries. President Blanchard, a reasonable man, listened to the arguments of the boys who wanted to play football…Some of the boys, who he thought were nice boys, convinced him that it was a wholesome game and the purpose was really not to maim or kill your opponents. All you wanted to do was knock them down and run over them…Finally he became convinced that with the rules changed…the sport could be an asset rather than a liability in preparing young men for a lifetime of fruitful service….

He consented to having it on the program, though he never came to understand the fine points of the game. Once our opponents were running through our line as if it were made of paper. The backfield men were making such tackles as were made. I was in a good position to know how weak our line was because I was in it. Fans along the sidelines began moaning. “We need a line. If only we had a line.” Finally Dr. Blanchard said, “The college budget is quite low but if we need a line perhaps we should buy one. How much do they cost?”