Missouri Western State University - Griffon Yearbook (St Joseph, MO)

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ING IT HAPPEN IN STUDE LIFE T

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Salute to St. Joseph Ten years ago - August 1, 1969, to be specific - Dr. M.O. Looney moved into a sparsely furnished office in the Frank E. Popplewell Administration building on the unsuliied cam- pus of Missouri Western College, making a permanent mark on the tabloids of history. A decade later - a mere grain of sand on the limitless desert of time - we celebrate the 10th anniversary of Missouri Western State College. But the history of this institu- tion of higher learning is still a young one, not yet developed into the mass of torrid tales and wonderful whoppers that lurk in the shadows of the town that Missouri Western calls home - St. Joseph, Missouri, U.S.A. While our campus was still woodlands, probably teeming William Clark and Meriwether Lewis passed by on their expedition to the Pacific Ocean. lt was in that 1804-06 trek, so soon after, that the land that is now St. Joseph was named Blacksnake Hills. Then, in 1826, a young man from St. Louis, following the best road through the Missouri wilderness - the Missouri River - jumped ashore at the foot of those same Blacksnake Hills, and the history of St. Joseph was set in mo- tion. His name was Joseph Robidoux, a man of powerful dreams and endless vision as a city of with indians, My history is an everlasting possession, not a prize composition which is heard and forgotten. -THUCYDIDES the growing United States of America. The history books will tell you that the city was named for Robidoux's patron saint, and most will agree. Others, however, will give a slightly different opinion that this man of powerful dreams wasn't getting enough sleep, and in a fit of restless passion, may have named the city after himself - the city's saintly founder. But, as Matthew Arnold said, On the breast of that huge Mississippi of falsehood called history, a foam-bell more or less is of no conse- quencef' Three years after the city's establishment, Flobidoux and other members of the local citizenry incorporated the Hannibal 81 St. Joseph Railroad, and on February 14, 1859, the first train from the east arrived in St. Joseph. Unfortunately, there wasn't a bridge across the Big Mud- dy. Commercially speaking, this would hurt St. Joseph in the years to come, for she was far ahead of Omaha and Kansas City in growth at the time, and had a good advantage of being an impor- tant link in the growth of the transcontinental railroad. St. Joseph would have its railroad days, but never to the extent of its expanding neighbors to the north and south. But every cloud has a silver lining. An old cliche, of course-but St. Joseph's silver lining made the young city the point of national atten- tion on a special day in the April of 1860. It was about 6:15 on the evening of April 3, 1860, when young Johnnie Fry, weighing just un- der 120 pounds, sopping wet, mounted his horse at Samuel Owens Jerome's barn on the west side of Main, between Jule and Faraon. Jerome gave the horse a slap on the rear and BEN WEDDLE A land without ruins is a land without memories is a land with history. -ABRAM JOSEPH RYAN