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