This is Cotner college—Cotner boulevard between Aylsworth and Colby—back, back in the early days of existence. The grass around it appears to be unbroken prairie growth. There are no walks around the building, not even paths. And yet this is very much a picture of Cotner now. After 1889, when the college opened, a tide of green washed up over the campus—a whole grove at the north and big sheltering trees elsewhere. And so also did a tide of youth sweep into the building to give it life. Now both tides have receded. And still, Cotner does not represent a totally lost cause. Young people who wish to attend a denominational college have merely been deflected to other Christian church institutions—Drake, in Iowa, for instance, nearest Nebraska.
A small church college is one of those anomalous places where students in the morning gaze worshipfully upon a preacher professor and in the evening plot to put his cow up in the belfry tower. Scattered over the world as teachers, preachers and missionaries, Cotner students recall happy days here, not only inspirational but full of pranks and fun. The college was named for Samuel Cotner, who donated a large tract of land in Bethany to the school. Closely connected with the school is the name of W. P. Aylsworth, first chancellor and later president emeritus, greatly loved and revered by the procession of students who passed thru the college during his lifetime. He was killed a number of years ago, as twilight was approaching—on Cotner boulevard, named for the college, and near the street named for him—by a speeding driver who did not stop and was never located.
No. 47—Union College
You may have heard that, in case you are absentminded on Saturday, on Sunday morning you can get a loaf of bread or a roast in College View. That is quite true, but such considerations reduce College View to its lowest terms. The fact that most of College View observes its Sabbath on Saturday is the result of a deep religious conviction which set up a college and spread around it a sympathetic community.
Union college (Seventh Day Adventist) has 12 buildings and many interesting features. One of the most interesting is its work program. More than 90 percent of its students, which usually number around 450, pay their way, at least in part, by working on the college farm or in its shops and buildings on the campus.
For the first two-thirds of its lifetime—the college, like Cotner and Wesleyan, was started in the late 80’s—the town was made up exclusively of those of the faith. For longer than that—we are not prepared to say definitely whether or not this is still true—much strictness was observed in the life of the students.
The college now has a medical cadet corps (shown in the picture), part of a nationwide program sponsored by the Seventh Day Adventist denomination and operating under the approval of the surgeon general of the U. S. army.
No. 48—Pershing home, 1748 B
