Season 2 Episode 5
Ben Binversie:
00:02
Navigating the relationship between the college and the town of 51²è¹Ýapp can be tricky, but it helps to take a look at the past, where we've been, and how we've changed, in some ways together, and in other ways, not so much. This is All Things 51²è¹Ýapp. I'm your host Ben Binversie. On today's show, we talk with Dan Kaiser, emeritus professor of history, about the evolving relationship between the town and the college.
Ben Binversie:
00:43
From racist housing covenants and Japanese internment, to botanical gardens and reduced tuition for Episcopal students, we'll discuss some episodes from the 1930s and 40s that show how this complex relationship has played out over the years. That's coming up next, after I remind you that the information and opinions expressed in this podcast are solely those of the individuals involved, and do not represent the views of 51²è¹Ýapp College.
Ben Binversie:
01:08
Dan Kaiser taught Russian history here at the college for many years, but it wasn't until later in his career that he really took an interest in local 51²è¹Ýapp history, sparked by his interest in the Ricker House in 51²è¹Ýapp, and the people who lived there, Kaiser turned his historical lens on the town and college, and it's that interest in local history to which we owe today's episode. We'll talk to Dan about three stories that give us a little glimpse into the changing relationship between the town and college, and tell us a little bit about each in the process.
Ben Binversie:
01:39
First, we'll discuss the opening of a foundry in town. Then we'll explore how the botanical garden became the site of the Episcopal Church, and we'll finish with the story of when Japanese American students came to 51²è¹Ýapp to study and escape internment camps during World War II. These aren't the typical stories from the canon of 51²è¹Ýapp history, down to the defining moments like the 1882 cyclone, or the shift to coed dorms, but they offer insights into the relationship that the town and college continue to negotiate with each other to this day.
Ben Binversie:
02:09
When J.B. 51²è¹Ýapp founded the town bearing his name, he made plans for a college, even a prospective syllabus, but it wasn't until 1858 that those dreams were fulfilled, and Iowa College transplanted from Davenport to 51²è¹Ýapp. At the beginning, the college more or less matched the makeup of the town. Small, white, religious conservative in many respects, they were largely in sync. Fast forward more than 150 years, and that dynamic has changed. We'll get there, but first, I asked Dan to take us back to those earlier days, a happier time, perhaps, when the college and town were mostly in sync.
Dan Kaiser:
02:45
Yeah, I suppose it is, in a way in which any sort of uni-cultural society is happy, which you don't have too many obvious points of disconnect. There were a few in the early days, but by and large, it was a world that was small, for one thing, it was a small town. It was dry, J.B. 51²è¹Ýapp was no fan of alcohol and so on, and he wrote one of these covenants, which affected almost all the property downtown and so on that prohibited the sale of alcohol.
Dan Kaiser:
03:15
So in a way, it was a very monolithic culture, which changed. It was already changing with the arrival of, particularly after the Civil War, the arrival of African Americans in town, it changed things, but I think the more dramatic changes occurred in the 20th century. You've got some manufacturing and particularly as immigrants from other parts of the world began to show up in 51²è¹Ýapp, and then these changes inevitably affected how the college related to the town, I think.
Ben Binversie:
03:44
So let's get to the first story that you talked about. 51²è¹Ýapp College builds a foundry. So what's the context here at the college at this time? Why would they be interested in building a foundry?
Dan Kaiser:
03:55
Well, I think it's a fascinating story to me because I think the college itself didn't have the idea themselves. They were struggling with money, they were looking in the early 1940s, the college had a decreased student population. They had emerged from the Depression with reduced student enrollment, but also with financial resources that they were insufficient for what they wanted to do.
Dan Kaiser:
04:22
There was a huge debt that had hung over the college from World War I time, actually when President Main had arranged to have the dormitories in North and South campus built, it was a huge investment. But the debt hung over the college for a long time and so there were real financial problems here, and I think that with the arrival of the new president, Sam Stevens in 1940, there was an opening to try to do some things differently.
Dan Kaiser:
04:47
But the foundry was really the idea, I think of this Marshalltown industrious who had connections with the college, but it was really his idea to produce the foundry in order to assist Lennox Industries, which is what he owned—Norris was his name, and it was his idea.
Ben Binversie:
05:05
Yeah, D.W. Norris was a 1892 grad of the college, owner of the Marshalltown Times-Republican and the furnace company, which is what the foundry was creating. So, just to give a little more context for the struggling nature of the college, because I think it's so easy for students and other people that are involved with the college nowadays to think, we have this giant endowment and the college has just always been, it's followed this trajectory since 1846 and we've always existed and we always will exist. But for a while, I think it was more tenuous than that. The figures that you talked about, in 1921, there were more than 750 students enrolled, and in 1943 that was down to 316. And the demographics of that were also changing as it was mostly female at that point as well.
Ben Binversie:
05:58
But Henry Conard, who we'll talk about, and he finds his way into all of these stories somehow. But he wrote a letter at the time that described the precarious nature of the college. He said, at the college, there's increasing difficulty from year to year, which can not go on much longer. But what can be done? The dormitories must be paid for. Of course, the 51²è¹Ýapp Foundation could be declared bankrupt and the buildings sold for what they would bring, but that would carry with it the ruin of the credit of 51²è¹Ýapp College.
Dan Kaiser:
06:28
It's hard to realize, I think I may have mentioned when we were talking about this before, but when I came to 51²è¹Ýapp, I became friends with Grant Gail who began at the College in 1928. And Grant was retired by the time I knew him. He'd been here 50 years or so, and we were worrying about what our salary increases were going to be for the next year. And Grant said, "In the 30s what we took was a salary decrease, not a salary increase." And so from his point of view, we were living high, and this was before the college really struck it rich as much as it has recently with the endowment. But yeah, those were desperate times. And the college was certainly on the edge.
Ben Binversie:
07:11
So this man, D.W. Norris proposes that the college build a foundry and lease it to them? What were the details of the arrangement and how did it work?
Dan Kaiser:
07:21
Well, Norris's idea, I don't understand the taxation of this, but he was intent on securing evidence that they were renting the foundry. That rent was somehow going to enable him to save money on taxes. So he proposed giving to the College a first dose of money, about $25,000, and getting the college to raise at least that much money from local townsfolk in order to invest in the foundry.
Dan Kaiser:
07:46
And Lennox would undertake to lease it for the first five years with the option to purchase it at the end of that five years as part of the deal. And so that's how it proceeded. The College was able to raise that money. Local businesses, by enlarge were satisfied with contributing to it. I think they collected about $30,000, and so things went forward very quickly from that point on. And the foundry was up and operating by 1945, I think it was. And it provided an initial boost of new jobs that simply hadn't existed in town before.
Ben Binversie:
08:24
They break ground in 1945 right smack dab in the middle of World War II. How does that factor into the story, and are there enough people in 51²è¹Ýapp to work at this factory?
Dan Kaiser:
08:33
Well, the war had affected the town and the College dramatically. One of President Stevens's ambitions or accomplishments I guess, was to try to supplement the mainly female student population in the war years by contracting with the military, the United States military in order to establish an officer training school on campus and yet another detachment of army personnel so that it was not uncommon to see, I think there was something about a 1000 army personnel then on campus.
Dan Kaiser:
09:06
That was a way of trying to keep money flowing through the coffers. But, the population and town in 51²è¹Ýapp in those years was not a very large population, there were not large factories. This would have been, it started only with I think about 30 employees, but the ambition was to end up with about a hundred employees in the foundry, and that would have been one of the bigger enterprises in town, so it was ambitious I think for the time.
Ben Binversie:
09:34
And then the part of this story that kind of shows a divide between the town and the College, this little episode with the restrictive race covenant that gets proposed. I'll just read it. "All lots in the tract are intended to be used solely by the Caucasian race, and no race or nationality other than those for whom the premises are intended shall use or occupy any building on any lot. Except that this covenant shall not prevent occupancy by domestic servants of a different race or nationality employed by an owner or tenant." Who proposed this and what happened with it?
Dan Kaiser:
10:05
It came from Norris's office. He had a lieutenant who did most of the paperwork for this. The idea — people listening to this may be confused by it, because I used to run, jog out by the middle school and go by the Donaldson factory out there. It doesn't show the original plans, which had imagined a residential neighborhood of 10 houses immediately West, excuse me, immediately East of the factory.
Dan Kaiser:
10:31
And the idea was that they would govern who could live there in order to maintain the financial value, I guess, of this real estate. But to the College's credit, as soon as this was proposed by the Marshalltown offices and so on, Louis Phelps, who was the College Treasurer and did most of the correspondence on this matter, Phelps just immediately said this wasn't going to happen. And it was excluded, and the houses were never built either. But I do think it important that the College at that moment took a stand on this issue rather than accede to the plans that Norris had laid down.
Ben Binversie:
11:05
Right. And I guess it's perhaps not surprising. I mean from the beginning, 51²è¹Ýapp as a town and college had, well, J.B. 51²è¹Ýapp had his abolitionist stance, so it's perhaps not surprising in that sense, but it's an interesting way when not necessarily the race covenant reflected the sentiment of all the people living in the town, but certainly one person. So, the College then sold the foundry in 1951 after about five or six years. So how did it work out for the college financially and in terms of their relationship with the furnish company in the town?
Dan Kaiser:
11:42
Lennox decided not to purchase the foundry themselves and they sold their lease with the option to purchase to Donaldson, which was a Twin Cities firm, made mufflers for heavy machinery and so on. And Donaldson enlarged the property several times during the time that they owned it. And at one time, I think there were more than 200 employees operating, working out there at the factory. And it had a huge impact in town. To my way of thinking, one of the most important things, over and beyond the number of people working out there, was the fact that it was a unionized labor force.
Dan Kaiser:
12:18
There had been several attempts to create unions at other enterprises here in town that had not worked. Local entrepreneurs were reluctant to deal with unions, but the Donaldson union survived all the way to the end, and it created I think a kind of alternative population in town, not just to kind of commercial a business type layer, but also a working class layer.
Dan Kaiser:
12:45
Many of those people lived on the South side of town, and so the politics of town subsequently had a kind of North-South orientation that I think the Donaldson factory played into. The College did not make a lot of money out of this. I mean, Louis Phelps created several accounting sheets to try to total it up, but it looks as though the college may have cleared it, depending on which one of these you look at. Either 40-some thousand or 60-some thousand dollars, which wasn't a lot for all the effort and money that came in.
Dan Kaiser:
13:13
But on the other hand, they got a lot of goodwill, I think, out of the town. And of course they did contribute to the use of some property in town and to create a kind of labor force in town. So there were good things to be had by it, but it was not a big financial success, I think in the way we think about some of these more recent financial dealings that helped make the college a billion dollar endowment.
Ben Binversie:
13:34
Right. That one didn't necessarily beef up the endowment, but still notable. So let's move on to the second story, which involves the College's botanic garden, which is no longer existing. And St. Paul's Episcopal Church, which is. So I think now might be an appropriate time to talk a little bit more about Henry Conard, who was a professor at 51²è¹Ýapp from 1906 to 1944. What should we know about him, especially in relation to this story and the botanic garden?
Dan Kaiser:
14:04
Well, Conard was a botanist. He was hired because he was well known botanist, who was a Quaker, he'd grown up in the East and gotten all his education in the East. He published a widely regarded book on water lilies before he came. So when he came, the idea about creating a botanical garden came with him. And the College attempted to raise money to support the botanical garden. They never got as much as they wanted. They tried to raise, I think it was $10,000 but they never got that much raised.
Dan Kaiser:
14:33
So Conard began planting things and scrimping as best he could. He arranged some connections with the Department of Agriculture and so on. So sometimes they got some free samples of various seedlings and seeds and so on. But the idea was to get it going. And over the course of time, it was fairly successful, the botanical garden. It was located just South of Sixth Avenue in the spot where St. Paul's now stands, but there was an attempt to create a prairie section, a wooded section. And then there were several areas that were devoted to various vegetables and flowers and so on, just as used for his botany classes. We know that people who took botany classes there, would go over there and there were reminiscences of taking botany. They'll talk about visiting the botanical garden and learning about various plants and stuff.
Ben Binversie:
15:23
The area we're talking about is just right South of Burling, where Sixth Avenue curves the intersection of Sixth and State. So we talked about the state of affairs at the College during this time period around 1930s and 40s with reduced enrollment and increased debt. So the College at this point, which has a religious history of its own with Congregationalist connections, reaches out to the Episcopal diocese of Iowa and asked them to sort of adopt 51²è¹Ýapp College. What is their motivation?
Dan Kaiser:
15:52
President John Nollen in the 30s had this idea, I don't know where it came from, who gave it to him, but it was Nollen who wrote to the Episcopal Bishop of Iowa proposing this relationship, and the Bishop brought it to the annual convention. The Episcopalians meet every year to discuss their various businesses and so on, and they immediately acceded to it.
Dan Kaiser:
16:14
That didn't seem to have been a great deal of effort after that, except that in Episcopal literature and so on, 51²è¹Ýapp was cited is one of those institutions to which Episcopal students might go, and they did begin to come. A fair number of students, Episcopal students began to attend the College, and this had an impact later. Not so much in the 1930s, but certainly in the 1940s when a new Bishop of Iowa, a man by the name of Haines took up the reigns and it was his intention to establish a chaplaincy on campus.
Dan Kaiser:
16:51
And with the accession of the agreement of the Board of Trustees, an Episcopal chaplain was appointed. He taught part time in the Speech department, but the other part of his duties were to counsel Episcopal students and also to regularly conduct Episcopal mass, which he did. And he was appointed in 1946 I guess it was. And he stayed for a couple of years in a house that the diocese owned on the corner of Eighth and Park.
Ben Binversie:
17:21
As a result of this kind of formal adoption of the College by the diocese, they got the Bishop of Iowa onto the 51²è¹Ýapp college Board of Trustees as a member. So at least nominally, they have influence with the College and it sounds like more than just a nominal influence. How can you quantify the impact of the church on the College at this point? Even informally with the amount of Episcopal students on campus.
Dan Kaiser:
17:49
It's a hard to credit, I guess George Drake who was President of the College here, after I gave the talk, we know that there were about a hundred or more than a hundred Episcopal students and the student population still wasn't very large. It's hard to credit that there were that many Episcopal students here, but they were, and it's clear that the college did not make it uncomfortable for them to be here and the fact that they could regularly attend the Eucharist, the Episcopal liturgy and so on, made it more comfortable for them.
Dan Kaiser:
18:22
But yeah, it gave the College the kind of dimension that it had not had when it was imagined certainly by J.B. 51²è¹Ýapp. I don't suppose he ever had any idea that the high church would play any role in the College or the town, but it did change it, and it helped, I guess the College get through some of this difficult time we were talking about before. You can build foundries, but there are other ways to bring students into the College, and connections with the Episcopal church was one of them.
Ben Binversie:
18:49
Right. And George also mentioned that at this time, the College didn't have an admissions department necessarily, and most of their recruiting if you will, was done informally, whether it's through teachers or religious leaders, then the church itself promoting people as an influencer of sorts to head to these colleges. And yeah, like you mentioned, they made it comfortable for the Episcopal students there. There was a like a hangout spot for them where they could listen to radio hour and communion and such. They also allegedly had discounted rates for first some of the Episcopal students for tuition, which is-
Dan Kaiser:
19:24
Yeah, that's right.
Ben Binversie:
19:25
... That doesn't hurt.
Dan Kaiser:
19:26
No, that's right. There was good motivation. It's worth remembering, I think, that 51²è¹Ýapp College, we think of it now as a very cosmopolitan place. People come from all over, including all over the world. In the 20s and 30s there were certainly people from other parts of the world, but it was largely a very domestic audience and very Iowa audience and in many respects, a very 51²è¹Ýapp town audience. So to connect with the Episcopal diocese of Iowa was important, I think in bringing Iowa students to 51²è¹Ýapp College. So it had a logic to it.
Ben Binversie:
19:59
So how do these two narratives collide? We've got the botanical garden and the Episcopal church. What happens?
Dan Kaiser:
20:04
I wish I knew the exact answer to this because it's a fascinating dynamic, but it is true that Henry Conard left 51²è¹Ýapp in 1944, and went to University of Iowa, which meant that there was not that same presence that had given impetus to creating the botanical garden. And in a way made the botanical garden eligible for someone to deal with.
Dan Kaiser:
20:24
And apparently, that is what happened. Although I say apparently because I don't really know, I haven't seen any document that confirms this, but it's pretty clear on that the Bishop Haines, and then his successor, a man by the name of Smith, Gordon Smith, Bishop of Iowa, understood that that property was available. And I don't know whether the Episcopal diocese paid some additional money for that, I don't know, but they made the former botanical garden home for the erection of a student center, which later then became the scene of what is now the church also.
Dan Kaiser:
20:57
So there was a student center on the corner, which was also a worship center, but the idea was to add finally a church to it. And in the 1960s still, until about 1965, there was not a full and independent parish. It continued as what they called an organized mission because it depended largely on students, and students came and went. But a steady population here required a little more time in order to get the financial resources for an independent parish.
Ben Binversie:
21:28
So eventually, how does this work out both for the town and the College and the Episcopal diocese in terms of religion in 51²è¹Ýapp and on campus? So where does this one...?
Dan Kaiser:
21:40
It was a good deal for the Episcopal church. I don't think there's any question about that. The parish in 51²è¹Ýapp had disappeared. There had been Episcopalians here since about 1870s, not very many of them, but there had been some Episcopalians here. There was a church on the South side of town that survived for a number of years, but by the late teens, right about the time World War I ended, it had more or less given up and disappeared.
Dan Kaiser:
22:05
So the Diocese of Iowa was very happy to have a reason to renew some Episcopal worship here, and the creation of a separate building, a student center like that, and to have the chaplain at hand and so on, I think that was a great boon for the Episcopal church. Not so much for the College, I think certainly they got that input of Episcopal students and that carried on certainly into the 60s but if you were to take an inventory today, I don't know who would do this, but if you were to count how many Episcopal students are on campus, I don't think you'd find very many. We have some who come to St. Paul's now, but it's a handful.
Dan Kaiser:
22:41
So from that point of view, it no longer matters very much, but the initiative of a botanical garden had its own reasons, its own route and so on. But unfortunately that's now gone and not recoverable in that sense anymore. So it was a kind of a wash I think in terms of the final result.
Ben Binversie:
23:00
Okay, let's get to the final story, which involves broader strokes of American history, I think, as Japanese American students come to 51²è¹Ýapp in the middle of World War II. So executive order 9066 has just been signed February 19th, 1942, which led to the force evacuation of all Japanese, including US-born Japanese Americans from the West coast. And the transport of over a hundred thousand people to relocation centers spread throughout the West, which were really internment camps. So 51²è¹Ýapp ends up accepting some of these Japanese American students during this time. How did that happen?
Dan Kaiser:
23:38
It's a wonderful story, and I think a great credit to the College. It's one of the stories I wish we'd talk about more, because I think it's a great credit to the College. Henry Conard had been a Chair of the Faculty, which in the time of President Nollen operated like a Dean of the Faculty. Nollen had been Dean himself before he became president, so he was comfortable having his hand in a lot of different things.
Dan Kaiser:
24:00
But Conard was very influential and his nephew had graduated from 51²è¹Ýapp in 1935, Joseph Conard, and he was at work on the West coast with the American Friends Organization, and he contacted his uncle here on campus and he was worried about these students, Japanese American students, they were American citizens, of course, they'd been born in the United States. He was worried that these students would be sent off to these camps, these internment camps, and he wondered whether or not 51²è¹Ýapp College couldn't help. They were pursuing other colleges too, but 51²è¹Ýapp was one of them, to take some of these students and provide them with a scholarship to make it possible for them to attend college and avoid ending up in these camps.
Dan Kaiser:
24:40
And Conard responded very favorably, and four students were admitted for the first year. They arrived in the spring of 1942. So they were housed over the summer and so on before the academic year began. And there were subsequent groups of students who were admitted during the war years. But it was an important gesture, I think. And it was one of those things that I think the College can stand very proudly of.
Ben Binversie:
25:08
So three of these students, William Kiyasu, Barbara Takahashi, Akiko Hosoi, those are the ones that you kind of focused on in your story. How were these students received on campus?
Dan Kaiser:
25:21
A 51²è¹Ýapp College student in the 1990s, I think it was, did a major project trying to find out what the impressions were, George Carroll was his name. And he contacted many of these people. Takahashi, unfortunately is now dead. Kiyasu is now too, so we have actually records of them. Not only did they accidentally remark on what it was like, but we have their reflections. And they were generally very grateful for the reception in the College.
Dan Kaiser:
25:50
We know that the students found ways to embrace them. I think one of the most fascinating ways, and one that I mentioned in the talk has to do with the attempt that was levied by the Iowa state legislature in order to try to prohibit Iowa colleges from accepting these students. The theory was that if Iowa boys had to be out fighting the war and so on, why should these students be receiving an education?
Dan Kaiser:
26:18
But to its credit, the 51²è¹Ýapp S&B, Scarlet and Black published a blistering editorial, making fun of these propositions. And both the students and the faculty passed resolutions that embraced the students and rejected this notion of the legislature that somehow or another these students should be sent back to where they came from or sent back to these internment camps.
Dan Kaiser:
26:42
And so on campus, I think they got, generally speaking, a very good reception. It was harder in town I think because the war, of course, sent young men basically often to war. Many of them were fighting Japanese on islands in the Pacific. Certainly as the war ground on, this is true. But even after Pearl Harbor, it was hard to look at someone who seemed Japanese and think that everything was okay if your warships or your nephew or whoever it was, went down in Pearl Harbor.
Dan Kaiser:
27:14
So in town it was not so good. The Japanese American students themselves provided relatively few examples of problems, but Kiyasu and others remarked that being there on the weekends, in town on the weekends was a bad idea. And most of the farmers came in on Saturdays to do most of their shopping, and at that time, Kiyasu and others said that it was just dangerous really to be in town, that the townsfolk with farmers and so on, said things and did things to them that made them feel uncomfortable. So in many ways, I think the campus ended up being kind of an island, a place for people to take refuge from. But yeah, it was a mixed reception, I'm sure.
Ben Binversie:
27:57
And then what happens to the students? Did they finish that 51²è¹Ýapp?
Dan Kaiser:
28:01
Most of them did not finish here. And I think my own reading of this is pretty understandable. The students who came here, Kiyasu who at that time had already finished his second year at University of California, Berkeley. He'd grown up in San Francisco, gone to San Francisco High School, Takahashi and Hosoi, both grown up in Los Angeles, large cities, they'd gone to large high schools.
Ben Binversie:
28:25
Bigger than 51²è¹Ýapp.
Dan Kaiser:
28:26
Bigger than 51²è¹Ýapp. The graduating class, Takahashi and Hosoi were in the same Roosevelt High School in Los Angeles. Their class was 530 or something like that, which wasn't that much smaller than the whole college that they came to. So they came to a very different environment, a town that was essentially white or nearly all white, nearly all Protestant and nearly all small, Midwestern in lots of ways. So it was not a good place for them to be, an easy place for them to be.
Dan Kaiser:
28:56
So most did not stay here. Takahashi did, however. She graduated and later wrote that she was appreciative for it. The others who came in subsequent years, there are a number who graduated, about half, I would say. Who came here, graduated from 51²è¹Ýapp. The others transferred to other larger institutions. But never forgot 51²è¹Ýapp. Even those who transferred elsewhere were grateful for what had happened at 51²è¹Ýapp.
Ben Binversie:
29:21
And I know there's an art piece by Barbara Takahashi that's I believe in JRC.
Dan Kaiser:
29:26
I had been up to the Student Affairs, any number of times, I hadn't paid that much attention to it. Takahashi was an Art major when she was here, and she went on to a rather accomplished career in Los Angeles. She returned to Los Angeles as an artist. But after her death, some friends of hers purchased one of her works and it now hangs opposite the Student Affairs office in third floor of JRC.
Ben Binversie:
29:50
All right. So summing it all up, looking at these three stories together, why did you choose these three to tell some stories about the College and what do you think they show us?
Dan Kaiser:
30:01
Well, I chose them in part because I wanted to do some things that are a little different and I think each of them has a little different page to the relations with the town. And it's not all financial. When we talk about the zones of confluence and so on, I think people mainly think about financial commitments as a College, own all this property, what are they going to do with it? And so on. But it's a much more complicated algorithm, I think. And I like the way that different aspects of the world or the economy interact with how the College and the community relate.
Dan Kaiser:
30:33
And the college's current wellbeing I think helps in a lot of ways. Folk in town can attend lots of events without any charge. It's a great thing, the world comes to their doorstep. But in other ways the College seems like a foreign country. And I think these episodes that I looked at, there are many more, of course, lots of different ways we might look at it, but they reveal some of the complexity I think that connects the town with the College. And so I like to think about them and their complex relationship.
Ben Binversie:
31:03
And historians like to talk about continuity and change and there's a lot of discussion now, and I'm sure there has been for a while here in town and on campus about the divide between the College and town. But these stories do show how complex that relationship can be. How does learning about the history of the College and the town and how they've grown and changed help us understand where we currently are?
Dan Kaiser:
31:28
It's a very good question. I think about it a lot. My own observation. I'm retired now, so I've been out of the traces for about 10 years or so. It's sometimes difficult I think to look back on the institution that you were part of and notice how different it is. And it's easy I think to regret it and say, well when I was there we did this, that or the other thing. And I think history, not just with respect to the College but to our understandings globally. We have to understand that things do change.
Dan Kaiser:
32:00
And one of the advantages of looking at history I think is it gives us an appreciation for that fact and its endurance and remind ourselves that what we contribute, as helpful as it may have been at the time, is a feature of its own time. And under changing circumstances, there will be still more change and it's important I think to be ready for it and to be able to accept it and adapt to it.
Ben Binversie:
32:23
Well put. Thank you Dan for sharing these stories and I hope people enjoy listening to them as much as I did, because-
Dan Kaiser:
32:33
Thanks for giving me a chance to talk about it, I enjoyed it.
Ben Binversie:
32:37
That was Dan Kaiser, emeritus professor of history here at the College. He has a blog, a treasure trove really, called 51²è¹Ýapp Stories. And I command you to check it out. He's done an incredible job digging up stories from 51²è¹Ýapp's past and there's enough on those blogs to satisfy your 51²è¹Ýapp history fix. At least until the time I get Dan back on the show.
Ben Binversie:
32:56
If you want to see some of the pictures from some of the episodes we've talked about, check them out on the podcast webpage. By the way, a little note on the story about the Episcopal church, Dan and I glossed over it, but if you listen to the first episode of this season about the history of Congregationalism at the College, that relationship with the Episcopal church is even more interesting. The Congregationalists who founded the college were in direct opposition to Anglicanism, of which the Episcopal church is a member.
Ben Binversie:
33:23
So to have the school founded by Congregationalists embrace Episcopalians a century later, it's a huge shift, one that might've caused the Iowa Band members to turn over in their graves. So check out that episode if you haven't already. It's the first one of season two.
Ben Binversie:
33:41
Speaking of all this town-gown talk, the past week, the College hosted two CNN town halls with presidential hopefuls, Tom Steyer and Joe Biden. If you saw it live on TV, you only saw the tip of the iceberg. But being here in 51²è¹Ýapp gave some of us a peek inside all that goes into a production of that size. We'll have some stories on the town hall experience on our website in the next few days, and hopefully we'll do a little recap on the next podcast. Until then, that's all for this episode.
Ben Binversie:
34:07
Next time we're going to talk to George Drake about the legendary Joe Rosenfield who left as big a mark on the College as anybody. George finished up his biography of Joe earlier this year, so we took some time to talk about the 1925 grad and longtime trustee, and his legacy at 51²è¹Ýapp
Ben Binversie:
34:23
Music for today's show comes from Brett Newski, Podington Bear and Will Bennett. If you'd like to contact the show, email us at podcast@grinnell.edu or check out our website, grinnell.edu/podcast for more information about the guests from today's show. And don't forget to subscribe to the podcast wherever you listen. I'm your host, Ben Binversie. Stay weird, 51²è¹Ýappians.