Most Noble Enterprise

H. Hildebrand William

Description

The centennial history of one of Ohio's premier public universities"This book tells the story of Kent State University's first hundred years. Itis a story replete with hairbreadth escapes and pratfalls, with moments of low comedy, high drama, and real tragedy. It features a cast of complex, talented, dedicated, and imperfect individuals. It is, in short, a story about very human beings engaged in what Henry Steele Commager called that 'most noble enterprise, the advancement of learning' as carried out for the past hundred years at Kent State University. And it is, I believe, a story both instructive and inspiring." -from the PrefaceAuthor William H. Hildebrand takes readers on an exhilarating and illuminating ride through Kent State University's ten decades: from its beginning under its visionary founder John Edward McGilvrey to the hardships of the Great Depression; through the post-World War II boom years and the tumultuous sixties culminating in the May 4, 1970, tragedy; from the university's struggle to regain its bearings during the decade-long aftermath, to its restoration and academic resurgence in the eighties and nineties; and into the emerging opportunities and challenges of the new millennium.Complemented by scores of photographs, A Most Noble Enterprise features vivid portraits of the school's eleven presidents and their distinctive contributions to the university's character and development. Along with snapshots of changing campus culture and student life, Hildebrand details the ongoing attempts to define the purpose and value of a university education, the relation of undergraduate and graduate education in a public research institution, the evolution of important centers and institutes in the arts and sciences, and the place of varsity sports in a public university during the most recent decades. The interplays among faculty, administrators, students, town, government, and university are key themes that flow throughout this engaging history. With supple, witty, and sparkling prose, the author evokes the triumphs and follies and humor and pathos of this complex, diverse university in all their fascinating, colorful reality.Long after the centennial celebrations and speeches have faded from memory, A Most Noble Enterprise will stand as a testament to Kent State's dedication to the ancient purpose of a university education-the advancement of learning.

Sujets

• Histoire
• University
• Local history
• Midwestern United States
• 20th century
• History of the Americas
• Ohio

Informations

• Publié par: The Kent State University Press
• Date de parution: 01 février 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781612777900
• Langue: English

Extrait

A MOST NOBLE ENTERPRISE
A MOST NOBLE ENTERPRISE
The Story of Kent State University, 1910–2010

WILLIAM H. HILDEBRAND
THE KENT STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS
Kent, Ohio
Frontis: A student descends the stairs facing the east entrance of Franklin Hall.
© 2009 by The Kent State University Press, Kent, Ohio 44242
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 2009008302
ISBN 978-1-60635-030-0
Manufactured in China
Except as noted below, the photographs in A Most Noble Enterprise are courtesy of Kent State University’s Department of Communications and Marketing and its photographers past and present: Robert Christy, Jeffrey Glidden, Gary Harwood, Douglas Moore, and Donald Shook; and the University Photographs Collection, Kent State University Libraries, Special Collections and Archives, including A Book of Memories , edited by William H. Hildebrand, Dean H. Keller, and Anita D. Herington (Kent State University Press, 1992), The Chestnut Burr , and Years of Youth , by Philip Shriver (Kent State University Press, 1960).
Page 71, Prentice Memorial Gateway photo by Daniel Doherty, Daily Kent Stater; page 274, Oscar Ritchie Hall interior photo by Steven Elbert of Moody Nolan; page 274, Halloween celebrants, photo by David A. Ranucci, Daily Kent Stater; page 312, Kent State Folk Festival photo by Leslie Cusano, courtesy WKSU.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Hildebrand, William H.
A most noble enterprise : the story of Kent State University, 1910–2010 / written by William H. Hildebrand.
p.   cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-60635-030-0 (hardcover : alk. paper) ∞
1. Kent State University—History. I. Title.
LD 4191. O 72 H 55 2009
378.771’37—dc22                2009008302
British Library Cataloging-in-Publication data are available.
13  12  11  10  09      5  4  3  2  1
To
ANN MEINZEN HILDEBRAND
cor cordium
HAIL TO THEE, OUR ALMA MATER
From the beauty land Ohio comes a universal praise,
’Tis the song of Alma Mater that her sons and daughters raise,
’Tis a Hail to Kent forever, on the Cuyahoga shore,
Now we join the loving thousands as they sing it o’er and o’er.

Hail to thee, our Alma Mater
O, how beautiful thou art,
High enthroned upon the hilltop,
Reigning over every heart.
From the hilltop Alma Mater gazing on her portals wide,
Sees the coming generations as they throng to seek her side,
Seek her side to win her blessing, throng her gates to bear her name,
Leave her gates to sing her praises, go afar to spread her fame.

Hail to thee, our Alma Mater
O, how young and strong thou art,
Planning for the glorious future,
Firm enthroned in every heart.
CONTENTS
Preface
1 Wishes and Fishes: 1910–1915
2 The Stormy Petrel: 1915–1926
3 Turbulence and Frustration: 1926–1936
4 The Leebrick Revolution: 1937–1944
5 The Bowman Years: 1944–1963
6 Big Dreams: 1963–1970
7 Four Days in May: May 1–4, 1970
8 The Aftermath: 1970–1971
9 Troubled Times: 1971–1977
10 The Golding Restoration: 1977–1982
11 The Changing Campus Culture: 1970s and 1980s
12 Ambition and Achievement: 1982–1990
13 New Perspectives, New Models: 1990–2006
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index
PREFACE
This book tells the story of Kent State University’s first hundred years. It is a story replete with hairbreadth escapes and pratfalls, with moments of low comedy, high drama, and real tragedy. It features a cast of complex, talented, dedicated, and imperfect individuals. It is, in short, a story about very human beings engaged in what Henry Steele Commager called that “most noble enterprise, the advancement of learning” 1 as carried out for the past hundred years at Kent State University. And it is, I believe, a story both instructive and inspiring.
As this book was about to go to press, and nearly thirty-eight years after the event, visitors to the Ohio Newspaper Association’s Web site ranked “the deadly shooting of students at Kent State University during a Vietnam War protest” the top news event in Ohio in the past seventy-five years. 2 The tragic events of May 4, 1970, and its tumultuous aftermath, are the hinge of the Kent State story. They extorted an unbearable price from the victims and their families, and they thrust Kent State into the center of a grave national crisis. For an entire decade the campus was a battleground across which the contending forces of the cultural, social, political, and generational revolution marched and countermarched.
Those thirteen seconds of gunfire on May 4 and the concatenation of explosive protests and demonstrations they set in train severely tested and tempered Kent’s character like a refiner’s fire. And in the process they strengthened its capacity not only to endure but to prevail. Yet, as this chronicle of its crinkum-crankum history will show, Kent State had been forced to struggle for survival against formidable external opposition and fierce internal disputes from the beginning.
A few words about the book, about what it is and what it is not, are in order. In recounting Kent’s first half-century, I have stood on the broad shoulders of Phillip R. Shriver, author of the superb The Years of Youth: Kent State University, 1910–1960 . Though grounded in my own research, my account of Kent’s first fifty years is inevitably a retelling of Shriver’s history, which provided the working scenario from which all future versions will take their departure. There are two consequential differences, however, between The Years of Youth and this book.
First, by interpreting Shriver’s story in light of the school’s second fifty years, A Most Noble Enterprise is able to reveal several recurrent themes and patterns, conflicts and resolutions, tendencies and traits of the sort that constitute the distinctive characteristics of any institution—or, for that matter, organism—and that become apparent only when viewed through the clarifying lens of a functional historical perspective. That, I take it, is what is meant when one hears it said that each generation must interpret its nation’s history in terms of its own experience of the world.
When I set out to research Kent’s early history, for example, I had no inkling that the Board of Trustees would figure so prominently in the story. A moment’s reflection might have told me otherwise, but like most people I gave as little thought to the trustees as I did to the ghostly beings on Mount Olympus. Nor did I expect that President Brage Golding would turn out to be one of the conspicuous heroes of my story. I had known all the other presidents between George Bowman and Carol Cartwright, to varying degrees, at firsthand, but my relations with Golding had been largely ceremonial. As a result, my half-baked opinion of him as having been little more than a highly efficient academic engineer was based largely on his aloof personality and my snap impressions—an opinion that slowly succumbed to the salutary evidence of his voluminous papers in the University Archives and to the testimony of respected colleagues who worked closely with him.
My book differs from Shriver’s comprehensive institutional history in another respect. I have chosen instead to write a work of popular history for several reasons. For one, it welcomes narrative writing of the sort I wanted to do, a story about people and their doings rather than one that also includes a full treatment of curricular, administrative, departmental, and plant development; there is some of that here, but not, I hope, enough to get in the way of the story. For another, I wanted to tell the story in my own voice and to use a wider range of rhetorical tones and fictional devices than is permissible in academic history. Thus, the reader can expect to find occasional switches into vernacular English, to indicate shifts in points of view intended to convey the feeling or attitude of or about an individual under discussion.
For yet another reason, I wanted to be free of the requirement for that tone of meditative neutrality that often characterizes traditional academic history. I knew that it would be impossible for me to write coolly about the place where I’d been educated and for thirty-six years was privileged to teach so many fine young people and work with so many generous and talented colleagues. Kent State University is an exasperating yet wonderful institution, with its wrong-headedness and near-sightedness, its follies and fads, its occasionally rude and ungrateful but mostly good-hearted and honest nature. It is, in fact, far different from the ideal university of my vain imaginings when I came as a freshman in 1948—and, when weighed in the scales of seasoned reflection, far, far better.
Of the many people who contributed to this book perhaps none is more representative of Kent State than my longtime friend and collaborator, alumnus Dean Keller, Emeritus Professor of Libraries and Media Services. Dean’s mother and aunt matriculated at Kent State in 1924, when Kent’s founder, John McGilvrey, was president. They came from their home near Elyria, Ohio, traveling by trolley, like so many other Kent students in those days. Here Dean found his wife, Patricia Scheid of Willard, as I found mine, Ann Meinzen of Canton. The children—and one grandchild—from those two marriages were educated here as well. All are deeply rooted in and indebted to Kent State University.
One
WISHES AND FISHES
{1910–1915}
E very great and enduring cultural institution has an origin story that tells about its beginning, about how it came to be. Kent State University is no exception. Such stories usually have features found in creation myths and high romances—resourceful characters, dramatic events, dovetailing coincidences, sudden reversals of fortune, moments of comedy and farce, and sometimes fabulous creatures. Kent’s story has all these elements—if you count the lowly bluegill. For according to local tradition, the school owes its very existen