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The next morning (Mon, Feb. 12), I arose, attended to some business and then decided to venture out in Hutchinson. I really didn't need to "make my peace" with Hutchinson, but I drove around town, stopping at the library to donate a copy of my recent book on Job (A Hard-Fought Hope: Journeying with Job Through Mystery) and going by our former home on 101 W 20th. Hutchinson was a very good town for our family; it provided a wonderful job for my (then) wife as Associate Pastor of First Presbyterian Church; a spacious and commodious house for us at an inexpensive price; and loads of friends for my kids. In fact, we probably lived in one of the last "Presbyterian ghettoes" in the United States, with Will, my son, having at least five Sunday school friends living within three blocks of us. The town was especially good for Will, born in 1987. During third grade (1995-96) he played on a soccer team, coached by an inspired Rick Roberts, which won every game they played. So close did the guys become that when Will announced that he would be moving back to Oregon, the kids took one of the jerseys, still covered with streaks of mud, and each signed his name to it. To this day Will's jersey hangs in his room, with a grungy pair of knee pads, a tiny reminder of a group of boys whose carefree lives and successful athletic fortunes bound not only themselves, but also their parents and friends together.

On to Sterling

And then I headed out 22 miles in a northwesterly direction to Sterling. I had driven the route countless times in the 1990s, and so I sped with abandon down 56th St. until it ran into K-96 just South of Nickerson. I passed the Hedrick Exotic Animal Farm, a place where I had given a talk in the mid-1990s after I hired a consultant to try to "promote me" (unsuccessfully, as it turned out). Those were the days of jazzy motivational speakers. So confused was I in those days that I figured I wanted to become like one of them, and so I marketed myself as "Bill Long: Conversationalist in Concert." I am sure I am blushing perceptibly as I write these words. In any case, that venture failed, and I had to content myself with teaching at Sterling College and trying not to self-destruct in the difficult world of the college in those years.

I had come to Sterling in 1990 because I wanted to get out of the teaching of religion, and SC offered me the chance to chair the history department and become a professor of world history. The idea fit my desire precisely, and so I plunged deeply into the study and teaching of world civilizations. I loved teaching it because I thought that I could get "credit" for and potentially use anything I read. I also decided to introduce a two-week unit on the study of Islam to the curriculum in 1990. This was before the first Gulf War, but I figured that one of the best legacies I could give to my students was to teach them something about Islam, a religion that almost no one in America was studying at the time. I still recall, with some delight, teaching the Five Pillars of Islam, with some students wanting to check directions to see where they should pray, if the urge to convert hit them.

Sterling and "Ideology"

Sterling was a hard place for me in the 1990s because I was captive to an ideology about life that prohibited me from seeing and accepting life as it was before me. I need to say a word about this. I have always been a person strongly driven by ideas. Indeed, people in my Christian Fellowship group at Brown would sometimes look at me and say, "Bill you are so heavenly minded that you are no earthly good." I warmly agreed with them. The downside of this approach to life (in addition to not being able to fix anything) is that the ideas of my life, at least in 1990, were more real than the people with whom I came in contact. And the idea that most controlled, and oppressed me, was that I was coming to the Midwest to try to recover my Evangelical roots so that I could be launched into some kind of religious/political/writing stratosphere. I had no idea what it meant, but I was driven, even haunted, by the thought of it. I began to turn out a book a year in the summers; I mastered large bodies of knowledge in my new areas of teaching; I felt that the "big break," whatever that meant, was sure to happen soon. But it didn't. I didn't realize that I was captive to an ideology that tried to fit life into its own mold--a mold to which life didn't want to conform.

And then, when I ran into situations in Sterling where the college was facing severe financial straits, where the President was seemingly picking on some students (one of whom was my friend Lance) for voicing their reasonable and insistent questions on where the college should be going, I wasn't sure how to act. I began to feel trapped and isolated. Instead of heeding the wise and patient counsel of more senior faculty members, such as Gordon Kling or Diane DiFranco-Kling or Arn Froese or Tom Keith, all of whom were much too tolerant of my own impatience and self-absorption than they should have been, I engaged in a sort of low-grade warfare with the President for two years. When he finally pulled out and moved on in 1995, my anger continued, and I knew I had to move on myself. And so I did--to law school back in Oregon in 1996.

Sterling in 2007

And so, as I arrived on campus on Monday, Feb. 12, I had all these feelings swirling around within. I hadn't made appointments with anyone, and I really didn't want to see anyone whom I knew. It wasn't that I would try to avoid them; rather, I simply wanted to try to catch the flavor of SC in 2007, a time long after the voices of those trying years had settled. So I walked across campus, noting similarities and differences as I went. Most striking was the restored Cooper Hall, which had been the College from 1887 until early in the 20th century. During my time at SC in the 1990s, Cooper was closed. Instability had developed in the foundation and the college had no money to repair it. Politicians came on campus vowing to get money to "save Cooper," but their words disappeared into the KS wind as quickly as they were uttered. But Cooper Hall had been restored a few years ago, and I wandered through it, looking at the classrooms and lounge spaces with amazement and appreciation. Several students greeted me in a friendly manner (SC students were always among the friendliest I had ever met) while I walked around Cooper. It even had two apartments or guest rooms on the 4th floor, mute testimony to the fact that it is difficult to get a decent room within 20 miles of the college. I picked up a copy of the local paper, the Sterling Bulletin, which, ironically, featured a picture on the front page of one of my Willamette colleagues in Oregon (!)--Dr. David McCreery--who had been back in Sterling (he is a graduate of the college, the son of a former President) to help kick off a fund-raising drive.

Conclusion

Sterling seemed to be humming with an optimistic air of quiet efficency. Two new dorms had just been built. Cooper Hall was spanking new. More students than in the past several years are now enrolled. I walked back to my car, almost skipping in the KS cold, grateful that the frantic thrashings of my life there left no trace at all. And, as luck or divine providence would have it, eleven years have brought me back to some people from that era, who have told me that I was one of the most inspiring teachers they had. How is that for redemption? Better than I could have imagined...

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