10. The Four Years of Wilbur Dayton (1972-76)

1. Richard Wing ended his history of Houghton College with Stephen Paine's presidency in 1972. Hopefully, someone will pick up the historian's mantle in the next few years and write the story of the last fifty years. As for me, I'll end my notes with the presidency of Wilbur Dayton, which lasted four years.

Previous posts in this series:

• Williard J. Houghton and the Founding 
• Seminary adds four-year college
• Luckey achieves accreditation
• A growing campus and faculty
• Stephen Paine becomes president
• Houghton and World War II
• Houghton and Post-WW2 Expansion
• Houghton and the Tumultuous 1960s
• Houghton Campus at the End of Paine's Presidency

Wilbur Dayton
1972-76

2. I was privileged to meet Wilbur Dayton in the early 90s at Asbury, and I knew his son Don Dayton. Both were Houghton grads, but they seemed like night and day to me. The father was very conservative and taught at Wesley Biblical Seminary for a number of years after his presidency at Houghton. To my young Wesleyan mind, Don seemed quite liberal within broader Wesleyan circles and quite the rabble-rouser. Don's work on the evangelical tradition in the 1800s was seminal, a classic for both Wesleyan and evangelical history.

Wilbur Dayton strikes me as somewhat of a tragic figure. Here is this nice man who didn't even apply to be president of Houghton. There were other names in the mix who were actually interested in the position. Bob Luckey, the son of the first president, could have been chosen, and he did go on to become president at Marion College. Mel Dieter probably would have made a great president, and he was in the mix.

Yet the board called Dayton, and he answered the call. He did his best. Yet as best I can tell from anecdotes from that time, the four years of his presidency were not particularly enjoyed.

Reinhold Campus Center

3. He was president during the Vietnam War. This was a time when many in the older generation felt like the younger hippie and protest generation needed to be brought under control. My impression is that the students at Houghton in those years may have felt the campus atmosphere quite restrictive. I think the Dean of Students may even have been a former military man.

Perhaps he was also seen as the Wesleyan Church sending in a man in to get a "liberal" college under control. The faculty had expanded significantly in the 60s. I imagine that a great number of these faculty were not Wesleyan, perhaps not very well acquainted with the Wesleyan Church. These are hypotheses about which I welcome redirection.

Lambein Hall

As Dayton exited, he was asked what he thought of being a college president. He remarked, "I have difficulty understanding the mentality of someone who would seek a presidency." He would finish out his career as a New Testament professor at Wesley Biblical Seminary in Jackson, Mississippi.

In the four years he was president, the Allegany campus maintained its enrollment around 1200, while the Buffalo campus was close to 200 students.

3. Here is a brief list of other events from Dayton's time as president.

• The Reinhold Campus Center was completed just after he started as president in 1972.
• A second girl's dorm, Lambein Hall, was built in 1973.
• Houghton joins The Consortium, a group of 13 Christian colleges that partner together on study-abroad, off-campus programs, and more.
• A learning center was added to the Buffalo West Seneca campus, called the Lambein Learning Center (1974).
• Woman's tennis begins (1974).
• The first woman joined the Board of Trustees (1975). This was Elizabeth Feller who had been so instrumental in the design of Gillette.
  
• Field hockey is added (1975).

Here endeth the series.

9. Houghton Campus at the End of Paine's Presidency (1972)

1980 campus

1. We finally reach the end of Stephen Paine's 35-year presidency in 1972 and perhaps the end of the second phase of Houghton's existence. The first phase was the founding, with J.S. Luckey as president. During that phase, it achieved accreditation but in many respects still had the flavor of an inwardly-focused, holiness school in the narrow sense. At the same time, its liberal arts curriculum touched the universe.

That phase effectively ended with World War II. The second phase, under the rest of Stephen Paine's presidency, turned it toward broader evangelical Christianity in a more outwardly-facing way. It became more than a denominationally-oriented institution as "worldly-wise" GIs returned from war. [1] With over 1200 students and nearly 100 faculty, it became a major Christian institution. It participated in and contributed to the broader (neo) evangelical developments of America at the highest levels. 

2. One of the most interesting developments in the last years of Paine's presidency was the connection with the Buffalo Bible Institute in 1968. This partnership would begin a Houghton presence in Buffalo that continues to this day. The Buffalo Bible Institute was located in the Buffalo suburb of West Seneca. The site at one time had been an amusement park.

Houghton had capped its campus capacity at 1200, so the Buffalo connection seemed both an opportunity to continue growing, to extend into other areas of study, and to connect with the possibilities of a large city. BBI was in financial trouble, which is always worrisome, but its board was willing to assume the debt if Houghton would take it over, which happened in September of 1969.

The Houghton trustees and administration had "grand ideas" for the new site, including a dream of over 1000 students. [2] It would never materialize, although Houghton retained the campus until 2009 when the Great Recession hit. Nevertheless, hundreds of Houghton students would graduate from the Buffalo campus over its forty-year existence. For many in Buffalo, it was the only Houghton they ever knew.

3. There are a couple buildings from the last decade of Paine's presidency that we haven't mentioned yet. One is the first men's dorm. While it is hard to believe, Houghton went almost the first eighty years of its existence without a dedicated men's dorm. Men lived in various homes and places around the village.

Shenawana Hall

That changed in 1961 with the completion of Shenawana Hall. It is hard to believe that it is now almost an sixty-year-old dorm, with of course significant upgrade over the years. The men of Shen are known to dress up in curious garb for soccer games, to stand next to the field, and to make curious noises. Before I came to Houghton, I also heard tell of some version of highlander games during the year, although I missed it this past year if it happened. The name, like Gaoyodea, is Seneca.

4. The mascot, "Highlanders," was assigned in 1967, the year Houghton took the leap into intercollegiate sports. The terrain of Houghton, the stone, the weather no doubt made a Scottish theme seem just right. A Scottish friend joked that this was appropriation of his culture, but I'm sure some of us have a wee bit of Scottish in our blood.

Intramurals had always been part of the Houghton campus, from races on the main road through Houghton to a track on what is now the Quad, to tennis courts behind Old Admin to the baseball diamond where Luckey is to the swimming pool in Bedford gym. Sports are often a sensitive question on Christian campuses because there is a rumor that they can lower the spirituality of a campus, with individuals signing up for sports rather than a college's Christian identity.

I don't at all think anything like this has to be the case. It isn't the case at Houghton, and it wasn't the case at IWU. In fact, there are parallels between physical and spiritual disciplines. About a third of the students at Houghton are athletes.

It started with men's soccer, cross-country and basketball. The next year Houghton joined the NAIA and added tennis, golf, track, and baseball. In 1969, women's basketball came on board. Women's volleyball followed in 1970.

Paine Science Center

5. Two more buildings were started at the end of Paine's presidency. The Paine Science Center was finished in 1970. Then the second was the Reinhold Campus Center, which was finished right after Wilbur Dayton became president in 1972. In 1971, Paine was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, the very next day he indicated to the Board his intention to retire.

cyclotron

For a liberal arts college, Houghton has a long history of excellence in the sciences. When I arrived last year, Mark Yuly was showing me around the science building, and I joked that we should build a nuclear particle accelerator around the campus. "Well," he said with complete seriousness, "we already have one." Apparently, Houghton's cyclotron is only one of two accelerators in the world of this size.

[1] There's a story about one returning GI who smoked his last smoke in Filmore before returning to finish his education after the war.

[2] Wing, 188.

Previous posts in this series on the story of Houghton:

• Williard J. Houghton and the Founding 
• Seminary adds four-year college
• Luckey achieves accreditation
• A growing campus and faculty
• Stephen Paine becomes president
• Houghton and World War II
• Houghton and Post-WW2 Expansion
• Houghton and the Tumultuous 1960s

8. Houghton and the Tumultuous 60s

Houghton chapel mural

1. Houghton may have suffered more during the wars over jewelry, wedding rings, and clothing than any of the other Wesleyan colleges. Of all the Wesleyan Methodist districts, the Allegheny Conference in western Pennsylvania was possibly the most conservative. President Paine rightly believed that Houghton was here to serve them just as much as the rest of the church, just as it served its Baptist students and just as it served former soldiers whose view of the world had been vastly broadened during the war. [1]

In the 1960s, Stephen Paine did his best to meet the stricter elements of the church halfway, only for them to leave the denomination in 1966. Later in life, he wondered if his efforts with them "may have been a great mistake." [2] Willard Smith noted that Paine "directed the expenditure of much time and effort on this issue." [3] "As an administrative committee, we spent hundreds of hours on the jewelry and slacks issue and during some of these years we did not have even an hour to study a budget of more than two million dollars."

Here is an example of the perspective of many in that district, from a speech given by the head of its Women's Missionary Society in 1959. "We are alarmed, amazed and horrified to see how universally men and women strut around nearly nude... It is a marvel to us that God does not strike people dead with their brazen defiance of all that is decent, moral and right... the sleeves are going up and up... We are alarmed at the fancy, worldly hair-do's... If God made your hair straight He wants you to leave it that way... fancy hats... highly ornamented glasses..." [4]

In the 1964-65 year, the controversy reached its peak at Houghton. The trustees singled out certain people because they had not conformed to the rules on dress and adornment. Wives and families of employees were expected to conform too, including not being allowed to wear wedding rings, for example. Of course, this was happening at the same time that Houghton was desperately trying to hire new faculty with doctorates. One faculty person, who wore a necklace when she was hired, resigned a year later when Paine told her she couldn't wear it and teach for Houghton. Then a year after that the rules were changed, and she was rehired.

Stephen Calhoun was Academic Dean at Central Wesleyan College when I went there. Before then, he had been a chemistry professor at Houghton. He had a moment of truth while a student at Houghton that was not dissimilar to one I also had in college. He came across another Houghton student who knew the Bible better than he did, was eager to see others come to Christ, but wore make-up, jewelry, and had short hair. He realized that those externals were no clear indication of a person's spirituality. [5]

2. Those issues are thankfully now in the past. Virtually no Wesleyans consider earrings or a necklace to be a sure indication of pride. Almost no Wesleyans would consider a short-sleeve shirt or shorts to be similar to going around naked. Women in the church now wear slacks and have short hair, and it has nothing to do with their spirituality.

In the heat of the moment, it can be hard to see that these dynamics of change are almost always in play. It may not always be a matter of progress. Sometimes it's just a change of focus from one generation to the next. Should we sing worship choruses or hymns in church? The issues may change, but the relative attitudes of the players often stay the same. Even in the 300s BC, Plato complained about how the youth had lost all their virtue.

A wise old friend once wondered if each generation of the church has about the same number of quests against unrighteousness going on at any one time. But since the targets of those quests tend to change, the older generation may think the younger one is becoming less spiritual. Similarly, the younger generation may think the same of the older generation because it doesn't see the issues they see.

Then the young people who are annoyed by their "conservative" parents often grow up to be conservative parents annoyed at their "liberal" children. And the cycle goes on.

3. My sense is that, throughout its history, Houghton's leaders have generally tried to take a middle road in the church and of course a kingdom road in the world. Willard Houghton aimed to "stick to the middle of the road." In 1902, chair of the trustees wrote in relation to Wesleyan educational institutions that "it is the medium ground which contains the truth." During conflict in the 30s and 40s over Calvinism, Paine gave a chapel message urging the campus to "agree to disagree." [6] Today, President Mullen has also continually championed what she calls "the courageous middle."

4. I have actually found Houghton to be an interesting mixture of "conservative" and "liberal." For example, I have no doubt that a large percentage of Houghton voted for Trump. And I'm sure there was a significant percentage that voted for Biden. And they all seem to get along with each other.

Houghton is a hymn place. It has morning and evening prayer every day. Abortion is a very important moral issue across the campus at the same time that there is concern to be good stewards of the environment. There is concern for social justice alongside a need for personal salvation and spirituality. This year I have heard both concern for Black Lives Matter and opposition to critical race theory. In other words, Houghton is a microcosm of the church.

Getting back to the second half of Paine's presidency, Houghton had significant revivals in 1951 and 1959. In 1951, the revival started after a particularly caustic evangelist had left campus. Still, God used him. Both men and women on campus started prayer meetings first in the dorms, then they moved to the church. At 5:30 in the morning somewhere between two and five hundred students were praying. This prayer went on for the rest of the week.

Houghton continued to produce missionaries. Marion and Marilyn Birch, brother and sister, spent twenty-five years and more in Sierra Leone. She worked as a medical missionary at the Kamakwie hospital. He worked as a linguist. Warren and Ella Woolsey were also missionaries there. He founded Sierra Leone Bible College where I taught for a couple months in 1997.

Stephen Paine's own daughter Carolyn and her husband were missionaries in Vietnam. They were actually taken captive for several months in 1975. Although it was before he was a student, Bruce Hess' family was taken captive in the Philippines in Mindinao during WW2. He would go on to be a missionary for OMS in his own right.

John and Charles Wesley Chapel

5. I wanted to work in a picture for this post, so let me finish it out with the construction of John and Charles Wesley chapel. :-) Part of the plan for a Quad involved a new chapel. Since the campus moved in 1906, chapel had been held on the second floor of Fancher and then in the village Wesleyan Church.

In 1957, the cornerstone was laid for a second building on the Quad (if you don't count Gillette), the chapel. In December of 1959, the first chapel service was held. The picture at the top of this post is the famous painting by Willard (and Aimee) Ortlip that wraps around the foyer of the chapel. It is 160 feet long and 4 feet high just under the ceiling. It covers the story of salvation history from the creation to the second coming. [7]

Not to be missed amid the death and resurrection of Christ in the mural is also the founding of Houghton College. :-)

The Ortlip Gallery in the current Center for the Arts at Houghton is a tribute to Willard and Aimee Ortlip, who taught at the college until 1958 and 1959 respectively. I believe most of the paintings in the Luckey Building are either his or her work, including the portraits of Silas Bond, Chester York, Willard Smith, and Stephen Paine.

Willard J. Houghton Library

6. Construction started on the Willard J. Houghton Library that same academic year of 1959-60, if I understand correctly. It is on the south side of the Quad. There is a fun story about the creek stone for the building. Apparently, on the preferred person's property through which Higgins Mills Creek ran, the cost was 2 dollars a load of stone. But they ran out of stone. The next property owner was asking 20 dollars a load.

They were saved then by a torrential rain, which flushed enough stone onto the less expensive person's property. Divine intervention?

[1] In the 1940s, Baptist students outnumbered Wesleyan students by 3 or 4 to 1. Currently, Wesleyans make up about 15% of the student body at Houghton.

[2] Relayed by his wife. Wing, 478n.87.

[3] Wing 279.

[4] Wing, 275-76.

[5] Calhoun also suspected that Paine was unable to distinguish his politics from his religion. Long before abortion was an issue, in the sixties when Democrats were pushing for civil rights and the great society, Calhoun wonders if the only professor who was a Democrat on campus was in part let go by Paine on the pretext of standards because he was considered liberal for being a Democrat. Wing, 280.

[6] Wing: Houghton, 282; Jennings, 269, 282; Paine, 263.

[7] Wing, 272.

[8] He suffered a stroke while he was painting the binding of Satan, but recovered enough to sign the painting on February 5, 1960.

Previous posts in this series on the story of Houghton:

• Williard J. Houghton and the Founding 
• Seminary adds four-year college
• Luckey achieves accreditation
• A growing campus and faculty
• Stephen Paine becomes president
• Houghton and World War II
• Houghton and Post-WW2 Expansion

7. Houghton and post-WW2 Expansion

Vetville, 
where Houghton Academy now is

1. The GI Bill helped to propel the US into late-twentieth-century prosperity. (Insert here the realization that it disproportionately favored white veterans. Features of this period that helped propel white America into suburban prosperity largely left African-American veterans behind, a situation of disadvantage from which black America, on the whole, has not yet fully recouped.)

In any case, you had the bulk of American men returning from the war, looking for a peacetime purpose in life. The GI Bill gave them the opportunity to study whatever they wanted to study and thus to pursue career paths they probably wouldn't have otherwise. It would slingshot Houghton College into the second phase of its existence in a spurt of rapid growth.

If Houghton had 292 students and 24 full-time professors in the 1943-44 school year, in 1949 it would have 816 students and 47 professors. 

2. This required a lot of building in a short period of time.

Willard Smith

For many years, Paine worked with a team of three other key administrators--Willard Smith (35) over finances, Art Lynip (38) as Academic Dean, and Bob Luckey (37) over development. Apparently, they were all very opinionated and strong-willed. Paine kept the peace, allegedly remarking in private once that, "An administrator never has the luxury of saying exactly what he thinks." [1]

If Luckey had his Bedford, Paine had his Willard Smith. Smith would serve first as professor of social sciences, then as business manager from 1935-72. From there he would go on to be the General Treasurer of the newly merged Wesleyan Church from 1972-78. One wonders the degree to which the success of the campus in this era involved him. He is another unsung hero of Houghton and the Wesleyan Church.

In the early 2000s, Smith reminisced about those days when the board mostly consisted of preachers who didn't understand business. "I found I had an audience that didn't know what I was talking about when I talked about hard-nosed business matters. I was stuck two ways: the typical academician who didn't know what I was talking about and the board members who didn't know what I was talking about, so I had nobody to talk to. Even Stephen Paine didn't understand the hard-nosed issues of the cost of deferred maintenance" ... etc. [2]

It is a well-kept secret in the academy that a college is a business that requires students in order to keep the doors open and that students only come if they perceive a college to have something to offer them.

3. As early as 1944, Smith and Paine went to Albany to meet with the governor to prepare for the coming onslaught of returning vets. First, the college rented and prepared one of the dorms on the Wesleyan campgrounds up the hill where Nielsen is now (Dow Hall). The old Wesleyan church building, which had become a recreation hall after the new church was built in 1934, was also fitted for temporary housing. Some classes would be held in the basement of the new Wesleyan Church.

Deer Hall
Seymour & Luckey Street

A barracks-type building was quickly constructed up Luckey Street in 1945, called "Deer Hall." A series of ten makeshift housing units was put up in early 1947 where Houghton Academy is now, called "Vetville" (picture at top). The college farm, up where the equestrian center currently is, was put into overdrive producing milk, meat, and vegetables.

Fine Arts Building

The shell of an old mess hall from a naval station was thrown up in late 1948 just beyond the music building, with creek stone put on the exterior. This new Fine Arts Building housed an art studio, 3 classrooms, and a new radio station named WJSL (for James S. Luckey). The radio station grew out of a physics project.

4. In 1945 planning began for a second girls dorm, which would first be known as East Hall but is now Gillette, named for Frieda Gillette the history professor. The planning for the new dorm would owe much in the end to Elizabeth Beck (Feller). She had been Dean of Women in 1944-45, and would later become the first female board member (1974). [3] In 1945, Paine sent the initial plans to her for her thoughts, a sign of great confidence in her judgment.

Gillette in the making

It would change the course of her master's work at the University of Michigan. [4] She now went around studying college dorms at various institutions of the moment, developing a functional approach to student housing. Her work was so good that it would be used by the federal housing authority. Thus was the birth of "East Hall," which had some occupancy as early as 1952. Eventually, two wings would be added to the ends, "Gillette" (1959) and "Rothenbuler" (1964).

5. A Middle States team visit in 1953 would also have a significant impact on the college. For example, it called for a more adequate library, a better gym, and housing for male students. It suggested that a 30-hour teaching load a year--the norm then--was excessive (even a 24-hour load is sometimes considered on the high-end today). It suggested wages were one-half to two-thirds what faculty could get elsewhere.

Of course to make all these improvements would take lots and lots of money, which is always the problem.

Houghton Academy

One of the most immediate recommendations had to do with the high school part of the school. They recommended that it be separated from the college. And so in 1955, Houghton Academy became a separate and distinct entity, with Walden Tysinger as principal. A new building for the academy was built in 1958 at the location where "Vetville" had been.

Over the years it would especially draw international students, which of course has been very difficult during this COVID year. My wife is actually teaching sixth and seventh grade this year there.

In 1956, everything was going great for the college. An enrollment goal and cap was set at 1200. A plan was adopted for the Quad structure that exists to this day, and a new library and chapel building was planned for it. In 1957 ground was broken on the new chapel.

[1] Miriam Lemcio, Deo Volente: A Biography of Stephen Paine (1987), 130.

[2] Wing, 203.

[3] I'm not sure how to interpret Wing's comment that it was only after Paine's retirement that Feller was elected to the board (258) or that Frieda Gillette was only "interim" chair of the Division of History and Social Science for six years until she pushed Paine to make it permanent. Am I to infer that Paine had theological problems with women in leadership? If so, this was probably a reflection of his engagement with neo-evangelicalism and the Calvinist hegemony of the day.

[4] Interestingly, Michigan was in Houghton's regional territory within the Wesleyan Methodist Church at that time.

Previous posts in this series on the story of Houghton:

• Williard J. Houghton and the Founding 
• Seminary adds four-year college
• Luckey achieves accreditation
• A growing campus and faculty
• Stephen Paine becomes president
• Houghton and World War II

6. Houghton and World War II

Luckey Memorial Building

1. When Paine became president, there were 406 college students and 52 high school students. There were 31 faculty members. Five buildings were on campus--the Old Admin (Fancher), Gaoyadeo (women's dorm), the Bedford gym, the science building (Woolsey), and the new music building.

Having a charter with New York state had already doubled enrollment under Luckey from 1923-28. When Paine retired, there would be 16 buildings on campus, some 1200 students, and almost 100 faculty.

Houghton train station
behind Three Bums

So Houghton would grow to its largest size under Paine. But it would also face its greatest threat during the World War II years, when it was not entirely certain it would survive. In a portent of the days to come, the last train left the Houghton station in 1937.

2.  In the last year of Luckey, an "Arcade" had been built to connect Old Admin (Fancher) and Old Science (Woolsey). This is where the library, the print shop, and some new classrooms would go.

Then in 1941, ground was broken to begin construction on the Luckey building, which as then continues to this day to house the President, Academic Dean, and CFO. [This is where my office and advancement are currently also.] Not every student was excited about the new building. It was, after all, taking away a baseball diamond facing Bedford gym. (There were also tennis courts at that time about where the Chamberlain parking lot is now.)

The night of the groundbreaking, some students took an outhouse and put it over the hole that had been dug by Bob Luckey. They put the sign "Luckey Memorial Building" on the latrine. Let's just say the Dean of Men (Stanley Wright) was not particularly happy about it. Luckey would be the first building on what is now the "Quad," which had also served at one time as a track of sorts. 

Old Admin chapel
(now MarCom in Fancher)

I might note that there were plenty of pranks in those days, mostly by the male students. There's something about a nineteen-year-old male brain that usually isn't quite fully cooked yet. For example, more than one prank was done in the late 30s with Stanley Wright's cow. They once somehow got it up to the second floor of Old Admin (Fancher) where the chapels were held (current MarCom). They were ministry students, of course. [1]

At another point, some boys set a crate of chickens loose in the girls' dorm, terrifying one of the single faculty members when the lights came on. [2] A particularly recidivist pranker named "Red" Ellis turned the power off in Gaoyadeo one night and then turned all the radios on highest volume that he could find in the dorm. He put cigars purchased in Fillmore into three pop-up toasters and pushed the lever down, then turned the power back on while exiting the building. Let's just say everyone soon woke up abruptly once the vacuum tubes in the radios warmed up and the whole dorm began to smell of cigars.

Chester York

3. Pearl Harbor would happen eight months after ground-breaking on the Luckey building. The construction manager from 1932-47, Chester York, had the brilliant idea of using creek stone for the outer facing of the building, a practice that became the signature feature of Houghton buildings around the Quad thereafter. A young man by the name of Paul Mills, son of the grounds-keeper, helped collect that stone from the nearby creek bed.

When it was all done, a building that was projected to cost $75,000 only cost $39,000, largely due to the ingenuity of Chester York and the grace of God.

4. Enrollment did not immediately decline after Pearl Harbor. Most male students finished out the 1941-42 year (482 students). The next year declined to 432 students. Then from 1942-43 it was 392 students. The lowest year was from 1943-44, when there were only 292 students.

The students and faculty that remained on campus did their part. Some faculty taught courses without pay. Ten Houghton alumni were killed in the war. Many more served (371 in fact), including Warren Woolsey. Students rolled bandages, gave blood, wrote letters. Instead of corsages, those men still around might give a "warsage" made up of war stamps.

As far as male prospects for the women, later history professor Kay Lindley (Michael Jordan's grandmother) remarked that it was mainly ministerial students and 4F men that were around. [3] :-) On Sadie Hawkins Day, it was three women to every one man.

By God's grace, however, Houghton would survive. And like a comet swinging around the sun, the war would soon accelerate the college almost beyond its capacity in the other direction.

5. A final thing that should be mentioned during the war years was a second revival on campus in 1942. The first had been in 1926. A boy had drowned after falling through the ice of the Genesee River. At that time, the Houghton church was already in the middle of two weeks of special services. It was during that revival that Warren Woolsey, then a junior, became a Christian.

[1] It is apparently quite difficult to get a cow to go down stairs. Willard Smith, whom we will soon meet, apparently assisted in the cleaning of evidence left behind.

[2] Alice Pool, French, Spanish, and English teacher.

[3] 1996 chapel address. Read President Mullen's 2018 eulogy of Lindley's service to the college here. In February (2021) we will be dedicating the Katherine W. Lindley Center for Law and Constitutional Studies.

Previous posts in this series on the story of Houghton:

• Williard J. Houghton and the Founding 
• Seminary adds four-year college
• Luckey achieves accreditation
• A growing campus and faculty
• Stephen Paine becomes president

5. Stephen W. Paine--America's Youngest President (1937)

President Stephen Paine
1937-72

1. God can take the worst of situations and use them for good. The tragic death of Dean W. LaVay Fancher in 1934 probably made it possible for Stephen Paine to stay at Houghton and, thus, to become its president in 1937. Frieda Gillette went so far as to say, "The way he went was traumatic, indeed, but perhaps the Lord was in it." [1]

Paine would become the second president of Houghton upon the death of James Luckey and would be the youngest college president in the nation at the age of 28. Paine would have the longest presidency of any Houghton president--35 years (1937-1972). In that time, Houghton would grow from about 300 students to just over 1200, its peak! In that time, the college would become a mature academic institution.

2. Wing's account indicates that there were tensions from time to time between a holiness church and an evangelical liberal arts college. He mentions that Luckey, "wanted the best Christian liberal-arts school possible and was willing to battle the Wesleyan Methodist hierarchy to achieve that goal." [2] One alumnus of the Luckey years remarked, "I got the impression from his attitude that he was not always in accord with the strict rules he had to enforce." [3] Remember we're talking about matters of dress and clothing and whether a boy and girl could walk down together to the village.

Paine was a Wheaton grad. His evangelical and Wesleyan Methodist stock was obvious, with one grandfather a founding member of the Wesleyan Methodist Connection in 1843 (George Paine) and the other the founding president of what would become Wheaton College (Jonathan Blanchard). [4] Still, the New York church feared he was "on the liberal side," from the Illinois district, you know. [5] It's a little ironic given that he is the man who more or less put the term inerrancy in the Wesleyan Discipline in 1955.

Roy Nicholson, who later would be General Superintendent of the Wesleyan Methodist Church (1947-59), noted that, to settle all doubts, they read a passage from the Discipline to see if Paine would pass muster. I assume it was the passage on entire sanctification. "I can answer in the affirmative," was the response. On the other side, some from Allegany county were concerned that the church, "would put in some tactless preacher" as president.

Paine's goal as president was to make Houghton, "the outstanding Christian college in the East." The fact that Houghton is usually put next to Wheaton and Westmont in the yearly national rankings suggests he achieved his goal. It is not too dissimilar from Willard Houghton's goal, which was that Houghton Seminary be "high in standards, low in expense, and fundamental in belief." [6]

3. The workings of God are a mystery to me. I believe that God could easily arrange for just the right person to take someone to a train station. So it was in 1933. John Willett goes to Michigan to a district conference. Paine, just having finished a PhD in classics takes him to the train. Willett asks him if he would consider teaching for Houghton. Paine says he would.

At the time of Fancher's death, Wheaton had offered Paine a professorship at three times the salary. His fiance lived in Illinois too. From a human perspective, he would be crazy not to take it. But Fancher's death opened up the dean's position in 1934. Three years later he would be president.

4. I've already mentioned that Paine would have a Greek textbook published by Oxford in 1961. I have wondered if almost everyone who teaches Greek for any length of time eventually wants to write their own Greek textbook. I have over 220 pages of my own attempt lying around. Paine used his work to teach until it was finally published as A Functional Approach to Beginning Greek.

Paine played a key part in the founding of the NAE, the National Association of Evangelicals in 1941. He would serve as its president from 1948-50.

Using the language of the mid-twentieth century, Paine and consequently Houghton were mainstream evangelical. Paine was there when neo-evangelicalism was born of individuals like Harold Ockenga, C. F. H. Henry, and Harold Lindsell. Paine was there when Billy Graham started his evangelistic crusades. In fact, George Beverly Shea, who sang in those crusades, attended Houghton in the late 20s, and the Shea family continues to have strong connections to Houghton College and the Houghton community.

We can distinguish the evangelicalism of that day both from what it called "fundamentalism" and what we call evangelicalism today, which are actually more or less the same. The neo-evangelicalism that arose in the late 1940s distinguished itself from groups like Pentecostals, dispensationalists, and, indeed, holiness folk. It called these groups, "fundamentalists."

The difference was not entirely theological, although neo-evangelicalism did tend to be more Calvinist. Neo-evangelicalism was more cognitive, while many of these "fundamentalists" were more experiential in orientation. "Fundamentalists" tended to believe in a tribulation and were pre-millennial. Evangelicals tended to be more post-millennial.

But these were not the only differences. You might argue that the most significant differences had to do with social status. Neo-evangelicalism had more money. It had more education. It had a higher social status.

Christianity Today and Fuller Theological Seminary were founded as (neo) evangelical institutions, underwritten by significant funding. Billy Graham stayed with Lyndon Johnson in the White House and knew every president personally. Evangelicals produced the Lausanne Congress and the Chicago Statement on Inerrancy. In short, it was a somewhat elite movement and, of course, thoroughly white.

I wonder if some of the tensions that Houghton has experienced over the years with the surrounding church can be explained in terms of this evangelical-fundamentalist contrast. If so, the tension would in part be one of both social class and education. Could it be that Houghton has often had more the flavor of Wheaton evangelicalism than holiness fundamentalism?

5. Stephen Paine was the key player behind the creation of the NIV. In 1957, Paine was given the task by the NAE to examine the new RSV for its accuracy. The Christian Reformed Church wanted a group to unite to create a different translation to replace the King James Version, one they deemed more faithful than the RSV. Although his wife disagreed, Paine himself saw the ultimate publication of the NIV in 1973 as the most important contribution of his life. [7]

As I mentioned, the statement on inerrancy in the Wesleyan Discipline was largely the result of Stephen Paine's efforts in 1955. It was important for him that the statement would say, "inerrant in their original manuscripts." This statement made it clear that "lower criticism" was permissible, namely, the textual criticism that has led to modern versions of the Bible like the NIV. The Bible is inerrant in the original manuscripts, so there can be errors in copying. Therefore, the King James Version may not be correct in its sense of how the original Bible was worded.

[1] Wing, 121. I won't stop to ponder how shocking a statement that is!

[2] Wing, 118.

[3] Wing, 101.

[4] Wheaton was originally founded by the Wesleyan Methodists as the Illinois Institute. Financial problems led to its transfer to Congregationalists.

[5] Wing, 122.

[6] Recorded in Houghton College's first Constitution in 1948. Wing, 155. "Fundamental in belief" was equated in that Constitution with the approach to Scripture of the rising neo-evangelicalism.

[7] She thought it was his influence on students (Wing, 128).

Previous posts in this series on the story of Houghton:

• Williard J. Houghton and the Founding 
• Seminary adds four-year college
• Luckey achieves accreditation
• A growing campus and faculty

4. A Growing Houghton Campus and Faculty (1912-1936)

Brick from Seminary and Bedford
now in Nieslen

1. At a 1912 alumni meeting, H. Clark Bedford urged the need for a gymnasium. It was one of those spark moments. Someone moved that they start taking pledges right then and $1000 was promised by the end of the meeting. When the building was finally dedicated in 1917, it was named after Bedford, who had been chairman of the project. [1]

Cleverly, they used "every brick, board, stick of timber, every bit of trim, doors, and windows" from the empty thirty-year-old seminary building down the road. When a new gym was built (now the Nielson Center), some of those bricks were put in the second floor wall where the running track is. In the picture, the bit in the middle is from the original seminary building. The surrounding bricks are from Bedford. This building would even have a small swimming pool added in 1926!

Bedford Gymnasium
(1917-81)

2. When Luckey returned as president in 1908, the new campus was in need of some significant improvements. When students moved in 1906, all the drinking water came from a spring below the hillside, pumped up by a one-cylinder engine that Bedford himself kept running most of the time. Others were paid $3.50 a week to keep it running.

In 1912, Luckey and Bedford searched around for a better source. They found one about a half a mile west of campus, a spring from which gravity could bring the water down. Once again, Bedford was charged with making it happen. Eventually, the college sold the water to some of the surrounding houses too.

In 1910, telephone reached Houghton. A rented hand-cranked phone connected the seminary on a party line to the phone of the village. In 1920, electricity came to the campus. Up to that point, they had powered the campus with acetylene produced on campus. There was an acetylene generator behind the girls dorm.

In 1912, the denomination approved indoor toilets in the girls dorm. It was not until the early 1920s that an adequate number were installed. Chamber pots and Houghton's "great brick privy" behind the girls dorm continued to be used until then. In the early 1930s, Allegany County "insisted" that a central sewer line be extended to the campus, and FDR's WPA installed it.

Affordability was an important value of the early Houghton, something I am incredibly excited to see President Mullen achieve again this year both for residential and online students. In 1916, elementary school students paid $10 per semester. High school tuition was $15 per semester. College tuition was $20 a semester.

3. During Luckey's presidency, other buildings went up.

• 

  Bowen/Old Science/
  Woolsey Hall

  In 1922-23, Woolsey Hall went up next to the old admin building (Fancher). It was used primarily for high school students, but it housed the library and science classes too. [2] 
• The girls dorm (Gaoyadeo) had dining bits added to the back in 1922, then living bits added to the north in 1931, and more rooms to the south in 1935.
• In 1932, the Music Building went up. [3] I smiled to read that the Trustees authorized this building "at a maximum of $6,000." By the time it was done, it had cost $14,000, "the number of doors being a major expense." [4] The Music Department itself was supposed to raise $2,000 of the $6,000, a third. :-) Apparently, the odd mixture of sounds that emanated at the same time from the building earned it the nickname, "Cacophany Hall."
• In 1934, the current Houghton Wesleyan Church was built. 

memorial for WW1 fallen
1920

4. I have not mentioned World War I. World War II was to have a dramatic impact on Houghton College, both during and especially after the war. World War I does not seem to have impacted the campus as much.

Nevertheless, there was "wild rejoicing" when news of war's end arrived in Houghton. "People went crazy with joy. There was shouting and laughter. The bells were rung. People rushed into the streets."

Three Houghton alumni did lose their lives in the war. Three trees were planted at a memorial service in the spring of 1920, two years after the war and after the influenza pandemic had subsided. They were planted on the hill just to the east of where Fancher is today.

5. Houghton, like many Christian schools in the holiness tradition, has had several spiritual outpourings. The first was in 1926. The Houghton pastor at the time felt that it was needed to counterbalance Houghton's academic advancement. It needed a "corresponding advancement in spiritual life." He counted 259 seekers at the altar and noted with approval that "professors are having prayer services in their classrooms instead of lessons." [5]

6. In the previous post, I mentioned that Houghton received a provisional charter with New York state in 1923, then a permanent one in 1927. Around 1930, Luckey upped the ante. He began to apply for Middle-States accreditation. This type of regional accreditation is what the world really looks for when they want to know if a college is legit.

The first application was "postponed"--not enough funds, not enough graduate training of faculty, too low of salaries to keep good scholars long term, loose administration in the admission of students.

He tried again in 1933. Action deferred. Financial resources still not good enough. Although when looking at the requirements, Houghton was really pretty much reaching them.

Finally, with trips by both Luckey and the young Dean Stephen Paine to the Middle States chairman and to Albany, Luckey successfully made his case.

Today in Fancher, marketing is where
chapel used to be

News reached Old Admin (Fancher) during chapel. The students were all upstairs and VP LeRoy Fancher was in the outer room of the president's office at the bottom of the stairs waiting for the call.

[I'm trying to figure out if I was actually in Luckey's office my first year at Houghton. There was an outer room to my office, and I was at the bottom of the stairs on the left as you come down. But the office in the picture on Gillette 91 looks to be the office by the front door.]

The bell was rung. Luckey could hear it over the phone. Houghton was now regionally accredited!

7. Like Willard Houghton, running the college wore Luckey out. Six months after accreditation, Luckey was hospitalized and underwent major surgery for cancer while traveling with the A Capella Choir. [6] He was never the same after that. In late 1936, he managed to come to chapel to confer the first honorary degrees of the college. He would die April 7, 1937, just shy of a year after his wife's death. [7]

[1] By then he had been president for two years of what is now Southern Wesleyan University.

Groundbreaking for Chamberlain

[2] Named after Warren Woolsey's dad (Pierce Woolsey) and built the year of his birth. It came down in 1988 to make way for the current Chamberlain building. Forgive me but I wanted to slip in this picture of President Dan Chamberlain at the groundbreaking because in it is Bud Bence, who hired me at IWU in 1997. He was the academic VP at the time.

[3] It stood until 1998, when the current Center for the Arts was built.

[4] Gillette and Lindley, 117.

[5] Wing, 107.

[6] Wing notes that "Many of the individuals interviewed for this book [2004] cited their opportunity to hear a Houghton musical group as being a prime factor in their decision to apply for admission to the college" (109). This would not at all seem to be the case now. Probably the appearance of ministry teams at summer youth camps has taken its place.

[7] Another sad note at Houghton in this decade was the suicide of Dean W. LaVay Fancher in 1934, who had been the likely successor to Luckey. He had a doctorate from Cornell. He had been a key player in getting Houghton up to academic standards for accreditation. He was even denominational director of Youth in 1931. Apparently, in addition to overwhelming stress, he was suffering from a horrible tooth infection in the days before pain medication and good surgery.

Previous posts in this series on the story of Houghton:

• Williard J. Houghton and the Founding 
• Seminary adds four-year college
• Luckey achieves accreditation

3. James S. Luckey, First President of Houghton (1908-37)

J.S Luckey
1867-1937

This is now the third post of my notes on the story of Houghton.

• Williard J. Houghton and the Founding 
• Seminary adds four-year college

1. In the second term of the school's existence, in December 1884, a "tall, thin, rather awkward" farmer's boy from Short Track made his way to Houghton Creek. This was the seventeen-year-old James S. Luckey, the second graduate of the school and its first president.

The school would never have existed without Willard Houghton. Who knows what would have happened if Silas Bond and A. W. Hall had not moved the campus to a better location. Similarly, the school might have gone into the ash heaps of history if it weren't for Luckey. The current administration building is aptly named for him, and there is a special group of donors to the college today who are known as the James S. Luckey Society.

2. Luckey worked to pay his way through. He did four terms at the seminary and then, to make money to continue, took a job as a teacher at a school for a year. He returned to Houghton in 1886, working on campus. In 1887 at the Houghton Church he went forward to the altar to consecrate his life to God. He thought at first God might be calling him to ministry. But in the end, God did not. 

He then finished his degree in 1889. In 1892 he came back to Houghton to teach math and Greek. He tutored one student in Latin until she married him in 1894. "amo, amas, amat," you know. 

3. He would become the principal of Houghton Seminary in 1894 and continue until 1896, during which time they switched from calling the head of the seminary, "principal," to calling them, "president." He thus was, in this first respect, the first president of Houghton.

Luckey was a math person. It is interesting that both he and President Stephen Paine continued to teach classes while they were president. Luckey was known to write a math equation on the board, pause to look at it, and then remark, "Isn't that beautiful?" Paine taught Greek and even wrote a Greek textbook published by Oxford Press. 

4. Then in 1896, Luckey continued his education and worked. A master's degree in education in 1898 from Albany State Teacher's College. Four years as principal of a high school. Then they moved to Oberlin College, where he got a BA in 1904 and an MA in 1905.

Oberlin was an important piece of the early Houghton equation. Before Houghton College was accredited, Houghton students would sometimes do three years at Houghton and then finish up at Oberlin. Oberlin had been a key institution in the evangelical revivals of the 1800s, a place that stood on a similar path as the Wesleyan Methodists on abolition and woman's suffrage. Luckey would actually teach there for two years (1905-1907).

He then studied math for a year at Harvard (1907-1908). He had a scholarship to continue to get his Ph.D. Then Houghton called. The hardest decision of his life, he forewent his Ph.D. in math at Harvard and returned to Houghton as president again, in 1908. Wheaton would finally give him an honorary doctorate in 1933.

4. Beyond question, the most significant of Luckey's accomplishments was to get Houghton accredited by New York State. It was not an easy feat. On the one hand, it was not easy because of New York state requirements for accreditation like $500,000 in assets, eight distinct departments with distinct heads, and faculty with the appropriate degrees and salaries. 

Meanwhile, the church wasn't sure it wanted anything more than a Bible college. Looking back, our colleges in the 1920s scarcely seem very liberal. But in the snapshot of a moment's time, some in the surrounding church may imagine that they are. Imagine the late 1960s when the church surrounding Houghton consisted of the two parts of the Wesleyan Church that didn't go with the merger over things like jewelry and hair length--the Allegheny Wesleyan Methodists and the New York Pilgrims.

Luckey, tireless in purpose and undaunted by resistance, pushed through to the goal. The state requirements, while difficult to achieve, did provide greater stability. Except for OKWU, none of the Pilgrim Bible colleges survived, and OKWU arguably survived because it went on to become a state-accredited liberal arts college. 

Many people won't try something because they don't think it's possible. They need to see someone else
do it first. Who knows what would have happened to Wesleyan higher education if Luckey had not shown that secular accreditation was possible--and without losing spirituality? Luckey showed the way. 

H. Clark Bedford

5. As a side note, in this era Houghton was the education dynamo for the Wesleyan Methodist Church. I've already mentioned that Silas Bond left Houghton in 1908 to be the founding president of Miltonvale. But perhaps the most interesting figure in this regard is H. Clark Bedford.

He was an early Houghton grad, one of those that went on to finish at Oberlin. He was then a math and Greek teacher at Houghton in the early teens. I'll mention some of his work with Luckey to develop the Houghton campus in the next post.

In 1915, Bedford went to be president of the recently established Wesleyan Methodist College in Central, South Carolina (SWU) for four years. Bob Black tells me that he was one of the best presidents of that era. In keeping with lessons learned at Houghton, he facilitated the building of "Grimes Hall" in 1916 at Central. Black says it was the building that legitimized the college, having electricity, running water, and steam heat. [1]

Then after a year back at Houghton, in 1920 he became the first president of the newly founded Marion College (IWU). His two years were not without turmoil. First, there was tension between the theological students who had come from Fairmount Bible College and the liberal arts students that made up the rest of the college. Marj Elder reports that Bible college students thought the other students were too worldly, and the liberal arts students thought the Bible college students were uneducated. [2] Bedford got up in chapel and pleaded for both sides to be charitable to each other.

It wasn't too long before Bedford himself was in the cross-hairs of the surrounding district. He was said to have a faulty view of entire sanctification. [3] The denomination vouched for him. His own statement affirmed full salvation and an experience of the baptism of the Holy Spirit. In the end, the district said they wouldn't support Marion College, and he resigned to keep the peace. He went on to be president at Penn College in Iowa.

6. In 1929 James Luckey actually commuted once a week to act as temporary president of Marion College as it continued to struggle in its first decade. It was still only 9 years old (it's celebrating its centennial this year). His youngest son Robert Luckey would actually go on to be president of Marion College from 1976 to 1984, and again as interim from 86-87. The old gym at IWU is actually named for him.

There's a fun story about father and son in 1934. Robert was apparently a bit of a "lucky" surprise when the senior Luckey was fifty years old. In 1934, alumni and friends raised the funds for the president to take a trip to Europe as a much-deserved vacation. He left from the train station in Houghton only to return the next day to pick up his son. He figured that if he went second class, he could afford to take the seventeen year old Robert with him.

7. Luckey danced through the landmines to see Houghton provisionally accredited in 1923. Now he truly was the first president of Houghton College! He raised funds both within the church and in the surrounding region. In 1925, there was the first group of accredited graduates. Then in 1927, the charter was made permanent. I'll save the quest for Middle States accreditation for the next post. 

8. Luckey was apparently a very positive and friendly face. But he was also highly detailed and quite a micromanager. Frieda Gillette, whose arm he twisted to come as a history professor in 1923, called him a "benign dictator." If one of his proposals did not pass, he would simply bring it back again and again until it did.

The students apparently had a ditty they said about him: 

Head full of brains,
Brains full of knowledge,
Rather go to Luckey's school
Than any other college

[1] Bob wrote a history of Southern Wesleyan for its centennial in 2006--How Firm a Foundation: Southern Wesleyan University 1906-2006.

[2] Marjorie Elders, The Lord, the Landmarks, the Life (1994), 76. This book commemorated the 75th anniversary of Indiana Wesleyan University.

[3] We can imagine the level of debate they might have had in those days about the nuances of entire sanctification. We probably wouldn't even recognize the minute issues of debate today.

2. Houghton Seminary adds four-year college (1899)

1884 Seminary Building

 1. From 1884 to 1899, Houghton was only a Christian high school or "seminary" as they called it. Then a full college program was added in 1899. This is the second post in some notes on the story of Houghton.

For more than one reason, we think of James S. Luckey as the first president of the school. More on him in the next post. But there were a number of principals before Luckey came to stay in 1908.

Except for Luckey, all of the first leaders of the school were preachers. William H. Kennedy was the first, apparently a very dynamic teacher (1884-86). The red-haired A. R. Dodd was principal for six years while also pastoring the Filmore Wesleyan Methodist church (1886-92). E. W. Bruce was principal for a year and pastor of the Houghton church. He would return to teach theology from 1905-11.

Luckey did take a stint as principal from 1894-96 before going on to do further study. It was in his second year, with around 60 students, that they started calling the leader of the school a "president." But there were still no college students yet.

Silas W. Bond
Luckey Building

2. The most significant of these other early school leaders was Silas W. Bond, who was president from 1896-1908. During his time as president, Houghton would start offering college classes. During his time, Houghton would move from its original site to its current one. One of the buildings constructed during his time still stands, albeit in a different location. My office was in that building my first year at Houghton (Fancher).

I have a hunch that Bond was a little peculiar. But he must have been very capable. He ran for office unsuccessfully a number of times for the Prohibition party. In any case, in 1908 he went to be the founding president of Miltonvale Wesleyan College, which would eventually merge with Bartlesville Wesleyan College. He was the only one other than Luckey to be called a president in those early days.

3. The first graduate of the seminary came in 1887. [1] The second was the great James Luckey himself in 1889. Programs were added one by one. In 1886 the principal's wife started a complete course in drawing, crayoning, and oil painting. In 1885 a business course was added for both men and women. I've already mentioned the Bible Training class in 1888. In 1890 a music department was added. In 1893 a two-year elementary teacher course came. Notice how late formal Bible training was added!

Then in 1895, the denomination approved the addition of college-level courses, an "Advanced Department" or "Academic Department." In 1899, they voted to raise the level of the seminary to that of a college as soon as possible. A four-year college curriculum was implemented that fall, with John Willett as its first graduate in 1901.

At first, the curriculum was very prescribed (Wing describes it as "imaginative"). [2] Five faculty taught everything. There was German. There was all sorts of Greek and Latin literature, and they assumed you would already have learned the Greek and Latin languages in high school. There were multiple philosophy classes, the histories of England, France, and Germany. Chemistry, physics, biology, and more.

When Luckey came back in 1908, he would follow the Harvard model and incorporate a new concept known as "electives."

4. The original site of the seminary was a bit of a haul up the hill, particularly in winter. There was a plateau even further up the hill, but few had the stomach for expansion there.

memorial to
Houghton's birthplace

So practical minds began to eye the property where Houghton College now sits. This is where the house of Willard J. Houghton's birth was, in the grassy lawn where Fancher is now. In 1914, the remains of the last Seneca native American, Copperhead, were moved across the street and given a boulder to commemorate him, a gift from Houghton's son Leonard. Thus the student yearbook of Houghton was named The Boulder. [3]

I smiled a little reading the account of this campus move in the Gillette and Lindley story of Houghton's first fifty years. [4] One gets the impression that there were people in 1902 who did a lot of talking about moving. Then there were a couple doers who got things done.

The first doer, if I am reading correctly, was the Reverend Sylvester Bedford. He bought the land where the current Nielson Center and art building are. The intention, at least in part, was to use it as a camp meeting site. To this day the annual camp meeting of the Wesleyan Church is held on the Houghton College campus. [5] At that time, the Wesleyan Methodist conference was called the "Lockport conference." 

The second doer was A. W. Hall, who bought the southern part of Bedford's land for the seminary/college (for $547.27). This is where the central Houghton College campus now sits. Still, conflict with an out-of-state brickmaker delayed groundbreaking on "Jennings Hall" till 1905.

5. Hall was the financial agent of the college at that time, just as Willard

A. W. Hall

Houghton had been. I see his name as one thread in this key period. I might add that he went on to work with the funds of the denomination but was eventually removed from denominational service for shifting funds around between accounts without permission. I don't mean embezzlement. I mean using money designated for one purpose for another. He thought this was his prerogative. The trustees of the church disagreed.

Two buildings constituted the new campus. The first was "Jennings Hall," now known as Fancher Hall. [6] The second was a girl's dorm, started in 1906. It was first known as Besse Hall and then as Gaoyadeo.

Besse and Jennings Halls

Of course, these buildings are different now. In 1987, Gaoyadeo was torn down. Fancher was then rotated 90 degrees and moved to where Gaoyadeo had been. In the picture to the left, you can also see in the back the "plumbing facility" for the dormitory (read, brick outhouse) and the heating building for the dorm.

6. Another one of Hall's legacies was the relationship between the Wesleyan Methodist Church and Sierra Leone, Africa. In 1889, the church sent Hall there and the report he returned was the spark that made the connection permanent. [6] The first missionaries of the church were to Sierra Leone, and most of those missionaries were Houghton grads.

Mary Lane left Houghton in 1900 for Sierra Leone and married George Clarke, whose wife died there after four years in Africa. Marie Stephens went in 1901, dying there also in 1904. John and Lizzie Ayers married and left in 1905. He died back stateside by year's end. James Luckey's old roommate, William Boardman, died in Sierra Leone less than a month after arriving with his new wife in 1902. By 1949, eighty-eight Houghton alumni had served on the mission field in sixteen different countries.

[1] Melvin Warburton.

[2] A Vine of God's Own Planting: A History of Houghton College from Its Beginnings Through 1972 (Indianapolis, 2004), 76.

[3] A contest was held and Keith Farmer of the class of 1925 won with this name.

[4] Frieda A. Gillette and Katherine W. Lindley, And You Shall Remember... a Pictorial History of Houghton College (1982), 67.

[5] I suspect this past year was the first time since its founding that it did not take place, because of the pandemic.

[6] A.k.a. "Old Admin."

[7] His reflections were published as Three Hundred Miles in a Hammock or Six Weeks in Africa.