Introduction

How did a boy of modest ability born in 1941 on a small northeastern Iowa farm grow up to have an academic career spanning more than six decades? My parents had limited means. They started farming during the Great Depression on 113 acres of hilly, unproductive land rented from my paternal grandfather. Mother delivered me in the downstairs bedroom of a nine-room house that did not have electricity, plumbing, or a working furnace. Father grew corn, oats, and hay on just sixty-five tillable acres and milked a small herd of ten Guernseys by hand. He sold the separated cream to make butter at the Elkader Cooperative Creamery and fed the skimmed milk to possibly one hundred hogs he hoped to market each fall. She kept a large garden and a chicken flock for selling eggs. Their annual income ranked well below the average for Iowa farmers at the time, but most shared their lack of modern conveniences.

The woods, rock formations, gullies, and creek on our farm might have made me a student of nature. Instead, I transformed the landscape by re-imagining the cinematic western and war adventures I viewed at the Elkader Theatre. Even if I had shown an agricultural aptitude and interest, our small, diversified farm did not offer me a viable economic future. By the Seventies when Mother and Father retired to town, Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz dismissed small farmers with the flip remark: “Get big or get out!” The large-scale and highly mechanized practices that Butz favored had already started to sterilize Iowa’s famed rich black soil with overused chemical fertilizers, insecticides, and herbicides.

Schooling gave me a way out and up. I am fortunate to have been born when United States higher education started to expand. The G. I. Bill sent more than 2 million World War II veterans to college. Others emulated their example even without the benefit of government aid. Moreover, post-war America was not a cultural wasteland as elite intellectuals claimed. A pervasive middlebrow culture stimulated educational aspirations in many homes. Everyone willing to commit time and energy might attain cultural knowledge more elevated than the self-interested practicality Americans traditionally valued. Symphony orchestras, art museums, and art movie houses existed in many cities. Even small town middle-class families had books, magazines, newspapers, and library cards. They might buy classical music recordings or listen on the radio to the NBC Symphony Orchestra and later Symphony of the Air concerts conducted by Arturo Toscanini or Leopold Stokowski, respectively.

I happily left an agrarian way of life to attend college, earn a doctorate, and pursue a lengthy higher education teaching career. Yet the lessons and habits of mind my parents instilled served me well as an adult. Father and Mother preached and practiced a rigorous work ethic. They disciplined my brother and me through “scolding.” Harsh, hurtful words (which we and our peers called “catching hell”) were directed at specific misdeeds and misbehaviors, and as such did not constitute abuse because however hurtful they were not spoken daily or even weekly. Children and parents doing daily farm chores well ensured financial success. Thrift mattered. Goods and money ought to be saved. Reused items reduced expenditures. One ought to help others. Farmers routinely shared labor and equipment to put up hay, thresh oats, fill silos, and pick corn. Father and others planted crops when an appendectomy kept a neighbor from doing the work. Mother cared for her elderly Aunt Mary several weeks one winter, and later for her father when he was ill.

Historian of American higher education John Thelin loves using memoirs about academic and campus life in his research. He is disappointed that many university archives in the Northeast have ceased to seek out and save them because they lack staff and space for carrying out new obligations to store voluminous institutional records. It is unfortunate that publishing  houses favor best-selling books recounting  the lives of the rich, famous, and powerful people and exclude less saleable volumes about persons less well known. Believing history should record the past experiences of ordinary folk, I offer an academic memoir that ought to interest college or university administrators and professors, scholars of higher education, and thousands of collegians who (like me) used their learning to attain higher paying careers and financial security.

Small liberal arts colleges once formed the backbone of American higher education and still play an important part in the 21st century. Unlike bureaucratized mega-universities impersonally processing students, colleges are more likely to engage the young and instill moral values while imparting the same academic knowledge as larger institutions. During my decades spent teaching at a Minnesota Lutheran liberal arts college, educational outcomes flowed from its memorable mission statement: “The purpose of Concordia College is to influence the affairs of the world by sending into society thoughtful and informed men and women dedicated to the Christian life.” These words encapsuled how the school had traditionally served society, and subsequently inspired BREW (Becoming Responsibly Engaged in the World) adopted as the core curriculum theme in 2006, and the PEAK (Pivotal Experience in Applied Knowledge) requirement established in 2017 for advancing integrative and practical learning. Concordia maintains these experiences best prepare business, health, and other professionals for coping with the challenges posed by modern world life and work.

I am indebted to four friends who made my memoir better. Fellow history graduate students John Schacht and Shelia Skemp shared several of my University of Iowa years. Each read and critiqued earlier drafts. Both, as well as former student Jennifer Ristau, did me the favor of writing short,  insightful paragraphs about the final version, which may be found in “About Book and Author.” Former Concordia College Director of Library Laura Probst’s considerable editorial assistance enabled the book’s final formatting. I am grateful for the indispensable contributions made by each of those named. Images of the Dovre Bell Tower and Carroll Engelhardt teaching and in the directory are provided courtesy of the Concordia College Archives. All other photographs were taken by me or family members.