The story of the construction of Morris Hall is one that encompasses the dreams and visions of then President Frank Hugh Sparks. President Sparks came to this college an already established man of industry. Dr. Sparks entered college in his later years after he had already established himself as a successful Indianapolis businessman as the founder of the Indianapolis Air pump Company, which grew into a multimillion dollar industry. He entered Butler University at the age of 38 with a goal of becoming a college president. Dr. Sparks entered college because of one aspect of society that concerned him, bringing to light his big idea: “The training of youth ought to be the concern of every adult who has achieved a responsible position in society.” Upon becoming president of Wabash College in 1941, Dr. Sparks envisioned changing the campus, but those plans were put on hold because of World War Two.

When Dr. Sparks finally got the opportunity to address the physical condition of the college he turned to architect Eric Gugler. Eric Gugler at this time was one of the most prominent architects in the nation, having designed the Theodore Roosevelt memorial and the rebuilding of the West Wing under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Gugler designed many of the buildings on campus, including the Sparks Center, Lilly Library, Morris Hall, Wolcott Hall, and Baxter hall. You can still observe Gugler’s touch in the G’s in the decor of many of his buildings. When in the Lilly Library, all one has to do is look up to see a G in the light fixture, and there are G iron inserts surrounding the Sparks center. The choice of Eric Gulger was a controversial move within the Wabash community, and this fascinating story is wonderfully laid out by President Byron K. Trippet in Wabash on My Mind, a book that I would encourage all to explore.

One might be asking what all of this information has to do with Morris Hall and Dr. Frank Sparks. President Sparks was extremely interested in getting men who had become financially successful to invest in the state’s private colleges and universities, his big idea, which he explained at the end of an episode of “This is Your Life”, an episode that you too can enjoy because it has been uploaded to Wabash College’s YouTube page. In this episode he expounded upon the quotation: “The training of youth ought to be the concern of every adult who has achieved a responsible position in society.” Dr. Sparks, along with other college presidents, felt that businesses were the chief beneficiaries of students with a good education, so in order to continue this good education they would need to invest in the state’s colleges.  President Sparks approached the education of men and the college experiences a lot like a business. The students are the products, and in order to produce a good product you need the best facilities. In his mind, in order to accomplish this, successful business men must invest monetarily in the nation’s colleges.

In order to accomplish this goal he created and implemented the Wabash College Institute for Personal Development.  The college archivist Beth Swift described the program as one that offered a basic great books course for local Indiana businesses. This overtime grew into a summer program for up-and-coming businessmen and CEOs.  One of the men affected by this program was Ernest M. Morris, who founded First Source Bank in South Bend Indiana, the largest locally controlled bank in the northern Indiana and southwestern Michigan area. His family donated a sum of money for the construction of Morris Hall in his honor. Morris had no real connection to Wabash. In fact, he graduated from Valparaiso University.

Gugler designed Morris and Wolcott the same exact way. When looking at the blueprints in the archives I was amazed to see just how little the building had changed. The design was to have two single bedrooms with built a built-in desk, dresser, and bed to be adjoined by a bathroom that would be accessed by both rooms. All of the rooms would be laid out the same way on one side of the building and a mirror image on the other. While Gugler did the actual architectural design, Mrs. Abbie Sparks was in charge of the interior design. Mrs. Sparks not only had a huge influence on the interior design of both Morris and Wolcott, but is also the main reason for the style of living. President Trippet observed that Mrs. Sparks believed, and conveyed to her husband, a notion of “gracious living,” and the new campus center and Morris and Wolcott epitomized this notion.

Each of the rooms had built-in wooden desks, dressers, beds, and closets. The floors in the hallways and the individual rooms were parquet wood floors. The bathrooms were tiled from floor to ceiling with a salmon pink ceramic tile with a marble door jamb separating the bedroom from the bathroom. The shower stall was in the same ceramic tile with a glass door. Each of the rooms had matching window dressings and bed linens. Each of the rooms had reading lights built into the walls above the desk and the bed. The rooms were even accompanied with maid and linen service. At the end of the hallway on each floor was a telephone booth, and each room had an intercom system, which has since been unwired and painted over for obvious reasons. When Wolcott opened its doors in 1955 to students, The Wabash recorded a rumor that had been circulating around campus about the luxury of the new dorms. The students exclaimed, “they even furnish the soap,” and these rumors were confirmed by the administration. The men living at both Morris and Wolcott were living in the lap of luxury thanks to President Sparks’ “big idea”.

The history of Morris and Wolcott are so important because they have not changed since 1954. Sure, the light fixtures are no longer here, and we no longer have linen service, but the bathrooms still house the faded pink tile and all of the built-ins are still surviving. This in itself is an amazing accomplishment and tells a lot about the construction of the building to withstand fifty-seven years of practical jokes, football games in the hallway, and the general abuse that can be imposed by seventy young men. While some aspects did not survive, like the glass door for the shower, which most likely fell victim to a rambunctious group of gentlemen horsing around, while the phone booth at the end of the hall no longer houses a phone, but toilet paper, trash bags, and light bulbs, the majority of the building is still surviving.

The modern amenities and luxuries that once graced this building have turned into oddities and issues of inconvenience and concern. The building itself is beginning to show its age. Dresser drawers no longer close completely. The walls are beginning to crack in areas, and there is nothing like going to bed at night knowing that you are sleeping on a mattress with no box springs on top of a piece of ply wood. As an independent I am very open to the idea of upgrading independent living and understand the constraints that the administration is under, but when a student who graduated in 1955 can walk into either Morris or Wolcott and observe that almost nothing has changed, then something must be done.

I have enjoyed my time here in Morris Hall, and much like C&T used to be, it is a common experience that I along with many others have had the pleasure to experience. Wabash is very much about a common experience, and that is what makes Wabash so great. In almost no other college in the United States can a father and son actually share the same room and almost the same experience. This occurs here at Wabash. My roommate Andrew Forrester, class of 2011, lives in the same room that his father lived in, Matthew Forrester, class of 1979. All of the men of Morris and Wolcott have shared this common experience. All have most assuredly had the moment of panic when they have been locked inside the bathroom and the lights turned off, and yes this does happen. The days of Morris and Wolcott being the jewel of the campus’s eye have faded away, and the days are slowly numbered for the once great dormitories.  When the time comes for the modernization and new facilities, I and the men who preceded me living in Morris and Wolcott will be sad to see them go. They truly embody the entire Wabash experience.

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A 1954 Cartoon in The Bachelor - Courtesy of Beth Swift

One of these changes was the installment and quick deconstruction of an Abraham Lincoln statue that was erected under the east portico of the Sparks Campus Center when the Center was first dedicated in 1954. The new Center was the center of controversy long before the Lincoln statue was erected. The College had hired an Indianapolis decorator to fill the new building with luxurious furnishings and fixtures. President Byron K. Trippet commented on some of these furnishings in his book Wabash on My Mind. With hand-embroidered English draperies to cover all of the windows totaling 1,000 per window and a large oriental rug for the Great Hall costing between $10,000 and $11,000, the whole budget for the decorating was $75,000 in 1954. The students from the very beginning voiced their discontent with the new building. As President Trippet remembered, “There were repeated references to Creeping DePauwism. One cartoon by Don Cole, the leading student cartoonist, showed a student sinking into the lush carpets as if they were quicksand, while other students threw him life savers attached to ropes.”

The idea of a Lincoln statue to cap off the extravagance of the new Center was the perfect medium for the students to voice their displeasure. President Trippet recollects in great detail all about the statue and its short time on Wabash’s campus. The statue was actually a plaster cast of the original statue, created for Lincoln National Life Insurance Co. in Fort Wayne. It was entitled “Abraham Lincoln: The Hoosier Youth” and was created by world renowned American sculptor Paul Manship. One of his most famous sculptures is the sculpture of Prometheus outside of Rockefeller Center in New York City.

The statue depicts a young Lincoln leaning on an ax handle next to a tree stump. At his side is a large dog that is resting his head on Lincoln’s knee. Eric Gulger, the architect of the new center, had acquired the cast and wanted it put under the east portico facing the mall. Gulger was the architect responsible for Baxter Hall and Lilly Library as well as the construction of the current Oval Office in the White House, and is largely responsible for the way that the mall looks today. When the statue was raised, the student body blew up with criticism about the new addition to campus. President Trippet recalled some of the students’ remarks in his book. “This is a fraud! Lincoln had nothing to do with Wabash! A rich man’s whim! Get this atrocious insult to Lincoln and to Wabash off the campus at once!”

The whole controversy over the Lincoln statue came swiftly to an end in a very humorous way. President Trippet, then Dean of the college, had received a phone call from the President of Indiana University explaining that a group of distinguished European educators wished to get a look at a typical American liberal arts college, and arrangements were made for them to visit the newly renovated Wabash College. The night before the visit, some students crept up to the statue of Lincoln and painted the male dog’s genitalia a scarlet red. The next morning Dean Trippet took a walk around campus and described the scene this way: “As I passed the new Campus Center I was frozen in sudden horror at what I saw. The spot of scarlet was visible from as far away as Yandes Hall! It stood out like a red flare in a black night!”

President Trippet immediately called campus services to come and remove the paint from the area that had been painted before the group of educators was due to arrive. Campus Services was able to remove all of the paint from the genitalia, but the cast was made of plaster, which over time had become a dusty gray in color. The area where the paint was removed, instead of being scarlet, now was bright white. President Trippet described the scene as such: “The paint removal operation left the dog’s genitals as white as newly fallen snow against a gray background. It was the best that could be done.”

After this incident the statue was quickly dismantled and placed into storage. The student body had successfully expressed their views and was instrumental in the Lincoln statue’s removal from campus. The statue remained in storage for a number of years. Occasionally students would drag the statue out and reassemble it, but it would be quickly disassembled and returned to storage. The original bronze statue is still standing outside the Lincoln National Life Insurance Co. Building in Fort Wayne, but the plaster cast that once graced our fair campus was destroyed and sent to the dump. In fact, there is only one known picture of the statue actually standing on campus, and it can be found in President Byron K. Trippet’s Wabash on My Mind, though the picture is easily overlooked.

The student body at Wabash has always been a boisterous bunch, and as the discussions of the future course that will replace C & T and possible curriculum changes that may accompany this course go on, it is important to remember the tale of Lincoln at Wabash to fully understand just how powerful the student voice can be.

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Luke Messer, class of 1991, is running for a seat in the House of Representatives in the 5^th District. Luke grew up in Greensburg, Indiana and was raised by a single mother who taught her children that they could do anything they wanted to do.  He came to Wabash with these same dreams and graduated with a major in Rhetoric in 1991.  He then went to Vanderbilt Law School and came back to Indiana to practice law.  He has served as a State Representative, passing legislation that changed the high school dropout age from sixteen to eighteen.  From 2001-2005 he served as the Executive Director and Chief Spokesman of the Indiana Republican Party.

Luke Messer was recently on campus to discuss with the Wabash community his campaign and how he plans to change Washington.  In this discussion, Messer presented himself as a man who passionately wanted to change the way Washington and the political system works.  He is not running against a Democrat at the moment, but he is running against thirteen term incumbent Dan Burton.  Luke feels that Burton has been in Washington for too long, and that reelecting the same person to Congress year after year inhibits the opportunity for new ideas and a change in Washington.  To combat this Messer is very strongly in support of writing a bill that limits the number of terms a Congressman can serve.  This is just one of the many plans that Messer has if he has the opportunity to serve in Congress, but his main focus is on Indiana and his family.  Luke is the father of three, and his wife is far from the traditional politician’s wife.  Jennifer Messer attempts to stay as far away from politics as she possibly can, and while some might see this as a negative to the Messer campaign, it is truly a positive because it keeps Messer grounded on what is truly important in the long run.  If Messer defeats Dan Burton in the Republican primary, then he is most likely going to win the Congressional seat, because the 5^th District is one of the state’s most Republican districts, along with the 4^th District.

Carlos May is another young Republican throwing his hat into the national politics rings.  Carlos is a member of the class of 2001 and is running for a seat in the House of Representatives in the 7^th District.  Carlos was born into a military family that had him moving throughout the United States and Europe until his family settled in Indianapolis when he was in the eighth grade.  After graduating from Zionsville High School, Carlos came to Wabash and graduated in 2001 with a BA in Political Science. He then went straight to law school at Thomas Jefferson School of Law.  Carlos has worked for the Indianapolis Mayor’s Office, and has devoted much of his life to public service.

Carlos too recently came to Wabash and spoke with the Conservative Union about his campaign and his hopes for the future election.  In this interview Carlos described the difficulties of running in a district that has sent a Democrat to Congress for the past eight years.  May feels that he can reinvigorate a voting bloc in the seventh district that has remained silent for quite some time, the Hispanic and youth vote.  May is 30 years old, and feels that getting the youth involved in the election is a huge component of his campaign strategy.  He also sees his Hispanic heritage as an advantage as well.  He told a story of a man of Hispanic heritage who was a hardcore democrat but said that he would support May if he ran because of the appeal of having a Hispanic in office.   The main reason May is running is a devoted passion for public service, a passion that has its roots in Wabash.  May described how Professor David Blix first put the idea of public service into his head after the two had dinner at the FIJI house.  May saw himself going to med school after his Wabash career, but Dr. Blix presented the idea of public service, and for May there was no looking back.  Another professor that had a huge impact on May was Dr. Edward McLean, or, as May referred to him, “Fast Eddie” McLean.  May credits McLean with leading him to Conservative ideals, ideals that led May to run for Congress.  As he stated it, he believes in lower taxes, strong national security, individual freedoms, and most importantly limited government, all of which are represented in the Conservative message.

Luke Messer and Carlos May are not the only young Wabash men that are throwing their hats into the political arena.  Charlie White, class of 1992, is running for Indiana Secretary of State, and Secretary of State Todd Rokita, class of 1992, is running for the House of Representatives in the fourth district upon hearing the news that Rep. Steve Buyer will be retiring due to family health issues.  All of these men make the Wabash community proud for their contributions to public service and the public good.  Wabash has had a long history of producing men who wish to enter the public sphere, and it is a tradition that will endure long into the future.

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Upon graduation, May entered Thomas Jefferson School of Law, where he earned a Doctor of Jurisprudence in 2003. Since that time, he has served as the Director of West Coast Operations for Marathon Building Services, the International Manager for DFS Galleria, a Consultant for Zebulon Inc., and most recently, the Mayor of Indianapolis’s Neighborhood Liaison. He has also been involved in various volunteer and community projects.

May will be attending and speaking at a meeting of the Will Hays College Republicans on Wednesday night, in Baxter 114, at 8:00 PM. The event is open to the public, and all who are interested in Mr. May or his campaign are invited to attend.

For more information visit:

www.carlosmayforcongress.com

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