Milestone for Kenyon

Like many another Midwestern school, Kenyon College at tiny Gambier, Ohio was built by one of the many Eastern clergymen who swarmed into the Western territories after the War of 1812. Since then Kenyon has passed two stiff tests. First was to face down the animosity of its Ohio neighbors who, learning that Founder-Bishop Philander Chase had raised his first $30,000 from the British nobility, firmly believed that Kenyon was a British fort. That notion Kenyon scouted by graduating many a stanch U. S. citizen, including two members of the Lincoln Cabinet, Secretary of War Edwin McMasters Stanton and Secretary of the Treasury Salmon Portland Chase, the Founder's nephew. Valedictorian of the Class of 1842 was Rutherford Birchard Hayes.

Second, and more serious, threat to Kenyon was the impecunious rut into which small denominational colleges are apt to fall. For avoiding it Kenyonites give full credit to their lanky, weather-beaten President William Foster ("Fat") Peirce who, since he came from Boston in 1892, has built Kenyon a spruce modern plant, raised an endowment of $1,600,000. Under President Peirce, Kenyon has drawn its 250 students largely from prosperous Episcopalian families, supported flourishing chapters of the swanker Greek letter fraternities rarely found on Midwestern campuses. Particularly proud are Kenyon-ites of the college's trim airport and two planes, the gift of Manhattan Lawyer Wilbur Love Cummings, Class of 1902.

As for 40 years past, last week "Fat" Peirce circulated among his alumni, exhibited his trick of never forgetting a face. To commemorate his original arrival he let students haul him up the road to the President's house in a dusty rattletrap buggy. Then able "Fat" Peirce dropped a word of his own. Having pushed Kenyon's scholarship up to the standards of Carnegie Foundation for Teaching, thereby winning a pension for all Kenyon faculty men over 70, he announced that he "would not like to form an exception to this desirable arrangement," that he would retire next year.

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