1945 — The Hillsdale Collegian reprints the account of Marine officer Lt. Gus Prudden’s service the previous month while serving in the Pacific: “My position at present does not allow me to say much about myself, except that I’m with the famed Second Marine Division — famed being the term for results of the ‘canal [Guadalcanal], Tarawa, Saipan, and Tinian, of which I’ve seen but a small portion. I have charge of a machine-gun platoon and can’t say that that is the most desired and cherished job. But I have a grand bunch of rugged Marines.”
1975 — Among an unprecedented increase in government control over American higher education in the mid-1970s, alumnus and trustee Phil Crane reiterates the board’s principle that, “If Hillsdale can’t make it without resorting to Federal assistance, then the fate of all private education has already been decided.”
1983 — Despite the college being already well-planted in the national spotlight due to the challenges leading up to Grove City v. Bell later that year, President Roche alludes to surrounding Hillsdale County — from which five outward-flowing rivers originate — as the setting for the symbolic “city on a hill,” saying: “The timeless principles of freedom, individual liberty, free enterprise, and limited government which built America and our own little school [are] the crux of everything we at Hillsdale do, in and beyond the classroom.”
1994 — Hillsdale students visiting Russell Kirk (pictured above) at Piety Hill — his estate in Mecosta, Mich. — plant an additional dogwood tree in honor of their American Studies “Dogwood Society.” From his bedroom window, the ailing Dr. Kirk called out, “All hail Hillsdale College; God bless Hillsdale College.”
The beloved conservative philosopher, and visiting professor at Hillsdale, passed away about a week later, on April 29, 1994.
-compiled by Dane Skorup
