Trip down memory lane: Graceland University

I've never had an experience like this.  

I went to college for four years at Graceland College (now Graceland University), in Lamoni, Iowa.  I had a great experience there.  The professors were top-notch.  

But I had not been back in 52 years.  A lifetime really.  

So Kathy and Bill graciously granted my request to visit Graceland on our Iowa tour.  Vicky wanted to see where I went to college and spent four years of my life.

It has taken me a couple of days to recover from this visit, and to try to put into words what I experienced.

It wasn't a bad experience, let me start off by saying.  And the campus is beautiful.  Rolling hills, just as I remembered.  Very green.  Everything kept up well.  No deterioration, which made me happy. 

The best way I can describe it was like someone took a mixer to my brain.  I was sort of reeling the entire time.  I had little interest in stopping to take photos, although I did stop for a few of them.  Vicky took photos for me, and I am so glad she did.

 The Higdon Administration Building.  

The only building that still looked the same as when I attended. 

 

Instead of taking photos, I had this intense desire to just walk around, trying to find the Graceland that had been burned into my memory for 52+ years.  And I never did find it.  It looked sorta familiar, but it wasn't where I went to college.  It was in an alternative universe. 

Everything looked the same, and nothing looked the same.  

I can identify some important ways it was different.  One is that there were a lot more buildings.  Even though the enrollment isn't what it was when I attended, there are more....well, buildings.

This is the office space I used when I was President of the Student Government.

Now it's the Residence Life Director's office, and the offices for the student government are in another section of the Student Union.

 Here is a list of the new structures.  (by “new” I mean, built in the past 52 years)

1.  Small apartments (apartment building for juniors and seniors)

2.  Thomas apartments (apartment building for juniors and seniors)

3.  Hoop House (a small campus garden house apparently)

4.  Hampton Center (Coaches’ offices)

5.  Shaw Center (Visual and Performing Arts Center)

6.  Helene Center for the Visual Arts

7.  Fitzgerald Fitness Center

8.  Cheville Chapel

 

My old dormitory had been renamed.  Instead of the Gunsolley Annex, it was now, get ready for this, Graybill Hall.  And here is the sign to prove it:  Graceland named a dorm after me! (well, not really, it was named for a Chemistry Professor named Graybill, but you would never have known if I hadn't told you, would you?).

 

 

The student center had been enlarged.....and almost all buildings named for donors.  When I was there, all buildings were named for people who had been historically important to the college. 

 

I was particularly interested in the Science building, which is now renamed.  Around back, on the lower level is where I took all of my math classes (I was a math major).  Math classes from Ned Jacobsen (hardest grader I ever had) and Jim Hawley, who gave extra time to me and a few other students to supervise us for an entire year going through a statistics book as a class.   Each of us students took turns teaching a chapter to the other students.

 

Alas, that has been changed as well.  No doors from the outside, and the classrooms are now labs.

I read where the University is no longer primarily a Church college.  My church changed its name 20 years ago.  Now only about 20% of students are church members.  It has become, basically, another small liberal arts college trying to stay afloat.

I'm sad. I know that maybe what I am really wanting is for time to stand still, and yet nothing does.  All of the professors I had who meant so much to me are now dead.  

 

A quote I frequently use, from the film True Grit:  Mattie Ross says "Time just gets away from us."

And I guess it's true.  You can't go home again.