AN INVESTMENT IN HUMANITY EDWARD RECTOR AND HIS HISTORIC SCHOLARSHIP PROGRAM FOR DEPAUW UNIVERSITY Lewis Gulick DePauw University Greencastle, Indiana i © 2009 DePauw University Greencastle, Indiana ISBN 978-0-936631-14-1 ii Contents Foreword v Introduction vii 1. DePauw’s Early Years 1 2. Edward Rector – A Son of the Midwest 25 3. Edward Rector – Great Benefactor of DePauw 52 4. Lucy Rowland Rector 67 5. Henry B. Longden – Executor Extraordinaire 80 6. The Grand Scholarship Program Begins 91 7. A Decade of Ups – Then Downs 115 8. Financing Through Crisis Times 131 9. Funding in the Post-Crisis Years 152 10. Administrative Reforms, Readjustments and a Revival 163 11. The Great Holton Gift 186 12. An Investment in Humanity 198 *** A Summary Conclusion 219 Epilogue 222 *** Appendixes A My Investment in DePauw 225 B The Rector Scholarship Proposal 235 C Minutes of First Meeting 237 D Rector Will 239 E Rector Letter to Scholars 241 F Rector Village 244 *** Acknowledgments 247 Sources and Notes 249 Index 268 iii iv Foreword During the 30 years I have been associated with DePauw, the name “Rector” has seemed to be so deeply embedded in the University life and history that it is hard to imagine our school without it. Edward Rector first came on the DePauw scene in 1915, nearly a century ago. That what he did and stood for continues with such impact is a tribute to this remarkable man. Rector’s contribution to DePauw for a scholarship program was outstanding in several respects. It was, for its time, one of the largest gifts ever to a school of this size. The gift enabled the University to offer full four-year scholarships to more than one hundred students a year, a significant portion of DePauw’s student body. Notwithstanding the demands of his important law practice, Rector personally devoted what time he could to aiding DePauw and in particular, the scholarship program and its youthful beneficiaries. He did so from the start of the program until his untimely death six years later. While he was open to program adjustments to meet changing conditions, Edward Rector stood fast on underlying principles for his scholarships which have proven valid to this day. This combination of strengths made Rector’s philanthropy unmatched in its way at any other comparable institution that I know of. DePauw was fortunate to have such a benefactor generous not only with this fortune, but also in the giving of himself and his keen intellect. His program has provided a college education for thousands of meritorious students to date and this emphasis continues into the new century. As this book relates, the Rector Scholarship program encountered stresses as well as successes over the years. The v An Investment in Humanity University learned from these experiences and made administrative and financial adjustments as time marched on. Overall, the history of the Rector program is intertwined with that of DePauw itself, and I believe the school has done a good job. Rector surely would be pleased were he to return today to survey the proceeds from what he termed his “investments in humanity.” Today Rector Scholarships continue to be the top merit award at DePauw. After weathering some difficult years, the Rector endowment remains substantial and is growing. Most important from Edward Rector’s humanitarian standpoint is the multitude of Rector Scholars who have graduated and enriched society in all walks of life in the 20th century – and more will be doing so in the 21st. I am pleased that further remembrance and recognition of this exceptional man and his program will come with DePauw’s publication of this book. Robert G. Bottoms President, DePauw University June 2008 vi Introduction A half century or so after I had graduated from DePauw, I was attending an alumni reunion in the 1990’s and was moved during a spare moment to stop by the University’s well-stocked Roy O. West Library. I intended to browse through a book or two on Edward Rector and his scholarship program. I had been a Rector Scholar, but over the years had known little more about the program than that it had helped many young men – and later young women – obtain a college education. So just who was Rector, what did he provide to DePauw, and what have been the results of his efforts? Surprise! I found no volume about him or his program on the shelves beyond a booklet written in his honor by a past DePauw president shortly after Rector’s death in 1925. Nor was there an account of how his monumental scholarship program had fared thereafter. However, I found the University Archives. There, original unpublished material about Rector was voluminous. The stacks carried collections on the man and his program in many files totaling more than a thousand papers. Related material was in other collections. Some pointed to sources elsewhere. I took a few notes and resolved to come back. Which I did, time and again. The idea formed slowly but naturally: with the wealth of material, why not write an in-depth narrative, as a way of repaying a debt to the man to whom I owed my college education and the great benefits to my life which ensued therefrom? So that’s how this book came about – and what it is about. The first chapter is a scene-setter summarizing DePauw’s early vii An Investment in Humanity years for those unfamiliar with this small liberal arts University in Greencastle, Indiana. After that, it is a story of a great benefactor of the school, and of his scholarship program which has helped so many young men and women to become contributors to society. One salient point cannot be overemphasized: Rector’s scholarship donation in 1919 – at the time the largest in history to an Indiana school and one of the biggest ever to a small liberal arts college - was so large for an institution of DePauw’s size that it shaped the character of the school from the time of its introduction and for many years to come. DePauw had fewer than 1,000 students, and lagging grades among its men, when Rector announced his endowment to bring in one hundred each year of the best and brightest high school male graduates with full four-year tuition scholarships based on academic excellence. The program reached its enrollment peak in the 1932-33 school year when a total of 700 Rector Scholars on campus comprised nearly half of the entire undergraduate student body and 70 percent of the men. Thus for years its Rector scholarship program distinguished DePauw in the college world, and the history of the program has been intertwined with that of the University. This book is the first published by DePauw since its Pictorial History in 1987. I trust it will be of interest both to the many hundreds of current and future Rector Scholars and to those of the DePauw community wishing to know more about the school’s history. Still others may wish to include it in their readings on topics ranging from philanthropies to scholarship administration and careers of scholarship graduates. In pursuing the research trail I found the subject matter at times tending to divide into two subtopics: one was on the personnel side, dealing with admissions and administration of the scholars on campus; the other emphasized the financial side, the handling of the Rector endowment assets and spending. To help reader understanding, I have addressed the financial history in separate chapters (8 and 9), notwithstanding a viii Introduction chronological redundancy with administrative developments over the same period. For me the research trail led to many expectable findings but also some which came as a surprise. Among those in the latter category were: n • A unfinished and unpublished autobiography by Rector himself. It does not tell of his DePauw experience but does provide a wealth of information about his early years. (See Chapter 2) • Portions of a diary by George R. Grose, a former DePauw president, who knew Rector well. The diary notes, recently acquired by the DePauw Archives, provided some close-up personal observations about Rector. (See Chapter 3) • Firsthand remembrances of Rector’s wife, Lucy Rowland, turned up in a dubbing of an audiotape of a speech given by a friend a half century ago, and live newsreel glimpses of Lucy Rowland at the DePauw centennial in 1937 showed her still active on campus at age 82. (See Chapter 4) • The extent of involvement in and dedication to the scholarship program by Henry B. Longden, a prominent figure in DePauw’s administration for many years. (See Chapter 5) • The extraordinary amount of Rector’s personal engagement with his program and the scholars. (See Chapter 6) • The existence of an unpublished master’s thesis analyzing aspects of the scholarship program, written more than 60 years ago by Robert H. Farber, a Rector Scholar who himself subsequently became an administrator of the program. (See Chapter 7) • The wide swings in both the administration and financing aspects of the program. (See Chapters 7-10) • The similarities and yet the differences between Rector as a donor and Philip Holton, whose unexpectedly large ix An Investment in Humanity scholarship gift came to DePauw at the end of the period covered by the book. (see Chapter 11) • The broad range and high quality of contributions to society by Rector Scholar alumni, not only from the superstars but also generally from among the less famous rank-and-file. (See Chapter 12) Finally there is the Epilogue, composed by a team of current undergraduate Rector Scholars who volunteered for research work on the book.