Archive for March, 2009
Neither a borrower or lender be….
Monday, March 30th, 2009In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Lord Polonius advises Laertes on how to conduct himself. During his oration he reminds Laertes: Neither a borrower nor a lender be; For loan oft loses both itself and friend, And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry. Now libraries, much more so that archives, have a long tradition of lending, at least [...]
An Indelible Impression
Friday, March 27th, 2009John Payson Williston, honored on Wheaton’s campus in brick and mortar through the “Women’s Building” built in 1895 and renamed Williston Hall in 1933, was a friend of Jonathan Blanchard. An inventor of indelible ink and a business man in Northampton, Massachusetts, Williston was also an abolitionist who used his financial resources and reputation to [...]
Gold-diggers
Friday, March 20th, 2009In Paul Bechtel’s Wheaton College: A Heritage Remembered, it is remarked that “Jonathan Blanchard drove himself unsparingly. He traveled, lectured, organized and promoted agencies for social justice, and labored in the cause of Christian higher education. Never a physically robust man, he suffered from chronic dyspepsia and periods of weakness. In the hope that his [...]
Zeke
Wednesday, March 18th, 2009Erwin Paul (Zeke) Rudoph II was a relaxed, vibrant young man of twenty, a student of English literature who also adored sports, particularly baseball. He possessed many friends and much promise. In 1967, after experiencing persistent vision impairment, fatigue and unsteady balance, he consulted his doctor. Enduring one exam after another, Zeke at last received [...]
Chase-ing Wheaton — full circle
Monday, March 16th, 2009One of Wheaton’s earliest trustees was Salmon P. Chase. During his career in public service Chase was a senator from the state of Ohio, had served as its governor, was Secretary of the Treasury (he appears on the $10,000 bill), and finally served as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. It is likely that Jonathan [...]
The One-Armed Explorer
Tuesday, March 10th, 2009Deep in Wheaton’s past lies a connection to one of America’s great explorers of the nineteenth century. John Wesley Powell, the great explorer of the Colorado River was known to Jonathan Blanchard as “the one-armed explorer.” Powell’s family moved to Wheaton, Illinois in 1852. Joseph Powell and his wife had three sons and three daughters [...]
Haze-y Days of Wheaton
Friday, March 6th, 2009According to the Oxford English Dictionary, Hazing is “a species of brutal horseplay practiced on freshmen at some American Colleges.” For nearly thirty years from the Pre-WWII era until the 1960′s, Wheaton College was no exception to this tradition. The rivalry between the incoming freshman and sophomore classes arose from parties thrown in the 1920′s [...]
The rest of the story…
Sunday, March 1st, 2009On Saturday, February 28 2009, at 90 years of age, the life-narrative of noted radio personality Paul Harvey came to a end. Born and raised in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Mr. Harvey began his radio career while still in high school in 1933 in Tulsa, Oklahoma at KVOO-AM. In June 1944 Harvey moved to Chicago and began [...]