An Instrument of Service

February 20, 2012Alumni, College-related Publications, Wheaton College Archivesadmin

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

February 17, 2012Wheaton College Archivesadmin

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

February 15, 2012College-related Publications, Wheaton College Archivesadmin

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.

50th Anniversary of “A Wrinkle in Time”

February 13, 2012Books, Collection-related Publications, Special CollectionsDavid Osielski

In celebration of the 50th anniversary of “A Wrinkle in Time”, this Newbery Award-winning novel written by Madeleine L’Engle has over 10 million copies in print. The following article was written by the author at the novel’s 25th anniversary.

It’s been twenty-five years since the publication of A Wrinkle in Time, and longer than that since I wrote it, and it is hard to believe that more than a quarter of a century has passed.

When I wrote Wrinkle, I was in a state of transition. We had been living in northwest Connecticut for nearly a decade, and were ready to move back to New York City. When we left the frustrations and stresses of Manhattan and decided to raise our family in the protected environment of a small, dairy-farm village where there we more cows than people, my husband thought he had left the theater forever. But forever (to my joy) was over, and Hugh was going back to the theater, and this move was going to be what is now called “culture shock” for our children. So we bought a tent and five sleeping bags and set off on a cross-continent camping trip.

As we crossed the North American continent I continued the thinking that had begun a few months earlier when I had stumbled across a book of Einstein’s and discovered that for me higher math is easier than lower math. My background in science was nil, and in any case the new sciences that excited me weren’t being taught when I was in school and college.

There’s nothing like marriage, children, leaving home (I was born in Manhattan) to start one asking all the old questions: What does life mean? Does it matter? What is the universe like? Is there a pattern and a plan? And am I a part of it?

The old philosophies left me unsatisfied. The religious establishment made the mistake of answering the great questions to which there are no answers, only new questions. I would walk the dogs at night, looking at the incredible sweep of stars above me, and philosophies and theologies centered only on his planet, and usually on only a small segment of the population, seemed totally inadequate. They left me hungry for something more marvelous.

We left on our cross-country trip in the early spring of 1959 and the first idea for Wrinkle came to me as we were driving across the Painted Desert. The names Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Who and Mrs. Which simply popped into my head. I turned around in the car and said, “Hey, kids, I’ve just thought of three great names, Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Who and Mrs. Which. I’ll have to write a book about them sometime.” And so the names of the three cosmic bag ladies went into the subconscious creative slow cooker. In the evenings, in the tent, I read from the box of books I had brought with me: more Einstein; Planck, and his quantum theory; books on the macrocosmic world of astrophysics; books on the microcosmic world of particle physics. There I found ideas about the nature of being which stimulated and fascinated me. When we got home, my husband went right into a play, and I sat down at the desk and typed out, “It was a dark and stormy night,” and the book poured out of my fingers. Evenings, I would read to my children what I had written during the day, and they would say, “Oh, Mother, go back to the typewriter!” (They didn’t always say that.)

When I finished the manuscript, I was drained and excited. I believed it to be not only totally different from my six previously published books but by far the best thing I had ever written. My children loved it; my husband loved it; my agent loved it. I hope that its publication would end a decade during which I had received countless rejection slips for more traditional books, half a dozen of which are still in typescript upon my shelves.

Well, I was kept hanging for two years, by many different publishers.
“What is it?” I would be asked. “Is it fantasy or science fiction?”
“It’s a book.”
“But who is it for? Is it for children, or adults?”

Over and over again, I received nothing more than the formal, printed rejection slip. These cold, impersonal rejections hurt. I began to doubt myself. Didn’t any of what I saw in the book get onto the typewritten page?

I had written Wrinkle beginning in the late summer of 1959 and finished in early 1960. The world was still in chaos. While my husband was reestablishing himself in the theater, the children and I stayed in the country. War with Russia seemed imminent. At school, the children were taught to crouch under their little wooden desks, their hands over their heads, in case an atom bomb fell on the school. What insanity! Some of my feelings about this insanity are expressed in Wrinkle. In it, I was trying to write about my own questions, my own affirmation of meaning despite seeming chaos.

(After Wrinkle was published, I was frequently asked if Camazotz didn’t represent Soviet Russia. Interesting: nobody asks that anymore.)

We moved back to New York, which no longer seemed more insane than the rest of the world. Air-raid sirens going off every day at noon, signs for air-raid shelters, for closed highways “in case of enemy attack,” seemed no more realistic than crouching under a desk.

And the rejection slips continued. How could they seem important against a background of a planet gone mad? They did. My book was a candle in the dark for me, and a hope.

A form rejection slip came on the Monday before Christmas 1961. I was sitting on the bed, wrapping Christmas presents and trying to feel brave, and thinking I was succeeding. After Christmas, I discovered that I had sent a necktie to a three-year-old girl and a bottle of perfume to a bachelor uncle. I called my agent. “Send it back. It’s too different. Nobody’s going to publish it. It’s too hard on my family. Every time it’s rejected, I bleed all over the living room rug.”

He sent it back, and that ought to have been the end of it. But my mother was with us for Christmas, and I gave a party for some of her old New York friends, and one of them happened to belong to a small writing group led by John Farrar, co-founder of Farrar, Straus and Company. She insisted that I meet him. I was, at that moment, not particularly interested in meeting any publisher. But she set up an appointment, and I took the subway down to Union Square, bearing my very battered manuscript.

John had already read my first novel, The Small Rain, and had admired it. I told him that Wrinkle was very different, but he was eager to read it. In two weeks I heard from my agent that he had read it, and really liked it, but was afraid of it. My heart sank. I had been so hopeful, after leaving John’s office, that the long wait might be at an end.

John and Hal Vursell (who was to be my editor from then on until his death) sent the worn manuscript to a librarian for assessment. She wrote back, “I think this is the worst book I have ever read. It reminds me of The Wizard of Oz.”

I’m not sure how many more weeks it was before John called me to tell me that he was going to publish the book. I went back downtown to have lunch with him and Hal, and they warned me, “Now, dear, we don’t want you to be disappointed, but this book is not going to sell. It’s much too difficult for children. We’re publishing it as a self-indulgence because we love it, and we don’t want you to be hurt.”

And then, in the spring of 1962, A Wrinkle in Time was published, and it took off like a skyrocket.

The problem wasn’t that it was too difficult for children. It was too difficult for adults.

———-

The Papers of Madeleine L’Engle are housed in the Wheaton College Archives & Special Collections and are available for research.

On My Mind – Jim Young

February 10, 2012College-related Publicationsadmin

Twenty years ago, the Wheaton Alumni magazine began a series of articles in which Wheaton faculty told about their thinking, their research, or their favorite books and people. Professor of Communications and Director of Theater Jim Young (who taught at Wheaton from 1973-2005) was featured in the Summer 1995 issue.

“On My Mind,” she told me, “On My Mind.” I confess that I rather quickly thought of the song title, “Georgia on my Mind.” After all, it was Georgia Douglass, the editor of Wheaton Alumni, who had asked me to write this, and perhaps more significantly, my wife, June, is from Georgia. So, appropriately, Georgia is on my mind.

But, of course, it didn’t take me long to realize that no other human being is on my mind in the same way that June is. But as I sat down in front of my precious friend, the Smith-Corona portable, newly-equipped with a grafted-on “t,” I breathed a prayer for this writing. I knew at once that the name of Jesus was the noun that “on my mind” modified.

What if we didn’t know his name? Names such as Savior, Teacher, Friend, Shepherd, as wonderful as they are, don’t equal the name of Jesus. The name that Scripture tells us is the only “name under heaven whereby we must be saved.” It is the name to which “every knee shall bow.”

There is a wonderful, blessed song we used to sing at camp meetings and at Sunday evening services. The prosody of the lyrics would be rejected by my professorial friends who teach creative writing, and the music, I suspect, would be lampooned by those in the Conservatory. Nevertheless the words are on my mind, and I want you to read them tolerantly:

Jesus is the sweetest name I know,
And He’s just the same
As His lovely name,
And that’s the reason why I love
Him so,
For Jesus is the sweetest name I know.

I’m embarrassed, but that song is on my mind. It blesses me a lot, even though I know the causal reasoning in the last two lines makes no sense. It just reflects what his name means to me.

Since I joined the Wheaton faculty in 1973, I have grown significantly and changed immensely. You might say I have gone through a major “p.t.,” or prepositional transition. Increasingly I have, through God’s grace and very slowly, moved from the “on” to an “in.” I am far from having completed the “p.t.” but through the writings of Thomas Merton, Alan Jones, and Henri Nouwen, and through the liturgy of the church at which I worship, I am creeping toward Paul’s invitation to “let this mind dwell in me.” There are times, far from frequent enough, when in prayer or worship, I know one of my convolution “file folders” is opened, emptied, and Jesus, Sweetest Name, enters in. Yet I am so far from living, moving, and having my being in him!

As I nudge in my Journey Into Christ (a great book by Alan Jones), I am beginning to experience at least two significant life changes. One is that my time with Jesus is far less “agendized.” It has become more intimate, and I no longer come to him with a list of my needs and go from him with a list of errands I then “sacrificially” perform. I sense more times with Jesus when I feel like the monk in the French monastery who often stayed after morning mass to sit in chapel. One day as he sat there, the abbot approached him and asked, “Why do you sit here when your brothers are in the garden, in the kitchen, in the library about their work? All you are doing is looking at the Crucifix.” The monk looked up and said, “Well, it’s just that I look at him, he looks at me, and we are happy together.” This reminds me of another one of those Sunday evening songs, “What a fellowship, what a joy divine, leaning on the everlasting arms.” The arms, the literal arms of Jesus are wondrous to behold, restoring to lean upon. Dwelling on the name of Jesus leads me toward that intimacy.

Another change as the mind of Jesus moves in, is that so much of what I sense Jesus meant by “the world” seems to pale into almost nothing. As his mind moves in, I find myself being called to (and by no means always answering) a smaller house, fewer clothes, a small car, a nurturing of our earth and conserving of its resources, to non-busyness, to a simpler lifestyle. So much of the “world” seems infinitely less alluring than the “joy divine” provided by the “sweetest name I know.” Try something with me. Have him in your mind. Breathe aloud the name of Jesus four times a day. See where the Holy Spirit takes the dialog.

Please know, all the Georgias and Georges of my life, that I write of what I long for and not what I have attained. I confess daily how far I am from having his mind. But what is retirement for if not to press on, to learn to DWELL in the secret place of the Most High?

———-
Dr. Young retires this year (1995) after having taught at Wheaton College for 23 years. In 1986-87 he was named senior professor of the year, Besides teaching high school for seven years, he taught at Asbury College, Taylor University, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and was chair of theater at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. He has written numerous monographs and book reviews, including the monograph titled The Staging of the York Mystery Cycle for which he won the Golden Anniversary Award for Best Publication in Theater History. He also won the AMOCO Gold Medallion for leadership in the American College Theater Festival. He and his wife, June, live in Wheaton, and have two sons and daughters-in-law, Steve and Susan, and Mitch and Gail, and five grandchildren.

A Burning and Shining Light

February 7, 2012Wheaton College Archivesadmin

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.

Miss Illinois

February 3, 2012Alumni, College-related Publicationsadmin

Over thirty years ago the following article was featured in the Wheaton College Alumni Magazine in May 1981 and is transcribed below.

Blythe Sawyer — Miss Illinois 1981
by Ed Meyer ’71

Little did Blythe Sawyer know, when she graduated from Wheaton’s Conservatory of Music a year ago, of all the excitement which lay ahead. She was an attractive and talented vocalist, intending to pursue a master’s degree in voice from Indiana University. Her goal was to sing at the Met in New York City in fifteen years.

Those goals are still there, and there’s a possibility she’ll meet them. But Blythe has postponed them after winning the Miss Illinois contest and a talent scholarship at the Miss America contest.

Blythe’s parents, Myron ’51 and lean Wright Sawyer ’48, joined with a former Miss USA, Karen Morrison (wife of Gordon Comstock ’74) in encouraging her to enter the competition. Morrison operates a modeling school in Wheaton and offered her professional assistance and experience. Blythe’s rooting section also included grandparents, ten aunts and uncles, six cousins, a brother and a sister who are all Wheaton graduates or present Wheaton students.

Blythe says, ”My first motivation was that this could be a platform for my singing. Of course, the potential scholarship money is as a factor, too. Now, I see this as an opportunity to share Christ with people.”

She first won the Miss Chicago pageant, and then went on to win the Miss Illinois pageant. Along the way she earned $2,000 in scholarship money. At the Miss America pageant she won an additional $3,000 in the talent competition.

Prior to the Miss America Contest Blythe participated in a 19-day USO tour to Veterans Hospitals in the western part of the United States. ”That was somc of the best training I could have had in preparing for the final contest. Also, we spent an hour every night with patients. While I could not always share Christ in so many words, it was a good opportunity to share His love,” Most of the last year has been spent modeling, making appearances at trade shows and store openings, and emceeing local pageants. Of these experiences she says, “I’ve tried to, as carefully and Christlike as I can, share Christ with people. It has been an opportunity for me to show the love of Christ with a giving, loving attitude. I want people to go away thinking ‘I felt comfortable with her. She seemed to care about me.’ ”

A disappointing effect of the singing Blythe did for the pageants and all the speaking she has done, is that she has developed some problems with her voice and is unable to sing now. This has been difficult for Blythe to handle but she says, “While I’ve always had my heart set on a performing career in classical music, I’m realizing that there are very few openings even for extremely talented People. Now, I’m sorting through various opportunities and trying to determine what other abilities and interests God has given me. I still desire to serve Him, no matter what I’ll be doing.”

A myth understanding

January 17, 2012Wheaton College ArchivesDavid Malone

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. The 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.

Robert E. Webber

January 9, 2012Books, Collection-related Publications, College-related Publications, Special Collectionsadmin

One of the more controversial professors at Wheaton College was Dr. Robert E. Webber, who influenced a generation of students and a large segment of evangelicalism. Raised in a Baptist church in Pennsylvania, he attended Bob Jones University in the late 1950s before enrolling at Reformed Episcopal Seminary, finishing in 1960 his graduate education at Covenant Theological Seminary. He began teaching theology at Wheaton College in 1968. Youthful, energetic and sympathetic to the concerns of students, he was a popular and highly effective lecturer. As he studied ecclesiastical history, its variable trends and moods, Webber perceived that vital practices had been ignored or recklessly tossed aside during the Reformation.

In 1978 he published Evangelicals on the Canterbury Trail, a collection of autobiographical essays by Webber and former evangelicals who gradually adopted Anglo-catholic or Catholic forms of worship. When released the book generated considerable heat among evangelicals who felt that Webber had betrayed the Protestant faith. Eventually, however, it was recognized that his pioneering research opened doors for fresh approaches to church life, whether liturgical expressions were adopted or not. Closely studying the permutations of Christian worship, Webber wrote or edited several additional books dealing with the history and function of liturgy, including Worship is a Verb, Blended Worship and the seven-volume Complete Library of Christian Worship. During his later career he concentrated on the writings of the Church Fathers, attempting to draw from their treatises insights for contemporary contexts. This interest is reflected in the Introduction to Journey to Jesus: “The model of evangelism proposed in this book is a resurrection of the seeker model…that originated in the third century…It speaks particularly to the current search for an effective style of evangelism in a world dominated by postmodern thought, a church living in a post-Constantinian society, and the challenge to overcome the resurgence of pagan values.” Webber was Director of the Institute for Worship Studies. At the time of his death in 2007, he was the William R. and Geraldyn B. Myers professor of ministry at Northern Seminary in Lombard, Illinois.

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