Monmouth College

MONMOUTH, Ill. — The name David Alexander Wallace is legendary at Monmouth College, in no small part because its flagship building — now 112 years old — was dedicated in his honor. Many Monmouth graduates retain a visual image of the College’s first president from the formal oil painting commissioned…

MONMOUTH, Ill. — In Meredith Willson’s The Music Man, Professor Harold Hill recounts to the people of River City the “electric thrill” he enjoyed when W. C. Handy, John Philip Sousa and four other legendary band leaders brought “the cream of every famous band” together on the same historic day.

MONMOUTH, Ill. — When the news of Sept. 11, 2001, reached Monmouth College one would imagine the College’s president calling an immediate cabinet meeting to plan strategy. But life is never that predictable. Instead, then-President Richard Giese was on Interstate 80, driving to a meeting of Associated Colleges of the…

Monmouth College alumnus built nation’s second-largest Presbyterian church from scratch MONMOUTH, Ill. — In 1965, when the Rev. Robert Meneilly ’45 delivered several sermons calling for the integration of largely white suburbs around Kansas City, Kan., it made front-page news and raised a firestorm of controversy. …

MONMOUTH, Ill. — It seems improbable that a humble farm boy from Berwick, Ill., would become one of the world’s leading economists, help the Allies defeat Hitler and be awarded the Medal of Freedom, but those are only a handful of the accomplishments of Calvin Bryce Hoover. Born to a…

MONMOUTH, Ill. — Beginning in 1906, the interurban electric railway allowed Monmouth residents to travel conveniently and inexpensively between nearby cities. Even after automobiles became more numerous during the 1910s, the interurban remained popular because paved roads remained scarce. That would change by the 1920s, when the Good Roads Movement…

MONMOUTH, Ill. — In the 19th century, Monmouth boasted a long line of wealthy capitalists. Names like Hardin, Quinby, Hanna, Weir and Pattee are inscribed on impressive monuments in Monmouth Cemetery. Then there was Calvin S. Orth. He lies beneath a modest headstone, did not live in a Broadway mansion…

MONMOUTH, Ill. — The history of Greek life at Monmouth College is both long and proud, but it is also remarkably complicated, due to a United Presbyterian Church edict against secret societies that caused the college Senate to ban fraternities from campus for nearly half a century. Greek-letter organizations at…

Before the 9/11 attacks in 2001, the universal date on which everyone alive at the time remembered exactly what they were doing was 11/22/1963 — the assassination of President Kennedy. …