Financial Aid

At the conclusion of the second year I was offered a small scholarship to the University of Iowa. As I’ve mentioned before I’m quite sure that Dean Dickey was the individual who steered this aid my way. I’m not at all sure what would have transpired for me had not this aid come my way. My parents were in no position to finance my going to Iowa State College for example which would have been the logical place for me to go.

I suppose I could have asked for help from my Uncle Carl. I knew from somehow that he had helped my cousin Eugene in going to college, but I had the vague feeling that he had a regard for Eugene (from the days when my Uncle Serenus was on the farm along with Uncle Carl and the bond between them that developed as a result) that he didn’t quite have for me. So I doubt I would have approached him.

I could have followed in Clarice’s place when she stayed for a year with Uncle Lawrence and Aunt Dagmar and went to Library School at the University of Minnesota. She did this when she couldn’t find a teaching position after finishing at the University of Dubuque. However, though I had a regard for Uncle Lawrence and Aunt Dagmar, and they had always been thoughtful of their nieces and nephews, I would have been restive living with them on a daily basis. I wouldn’t have gone to library school of course but the University of Minnesota had a good engineering school.

The other alternative for me was to have slowly drifted into a farming career. Though Uncle Carl had been an acerbic mentor I had acquired a liking for farming, being out of doors and relishing the opportunity of growing things. Maybe I had inherited my mother’s liking for “gardening.” My father had inherited my grandfather Strand’s basic farm when he died in 1938 and in 1940 when I finished my second year at junior college I could perhaps, with enough financing, to get the basic equipment, have started to farm it.

But that was not to be, and is idle speculation, and in the fall of 1940, I head for the University of Iowa. It did not have the prestige of the engineering department at Iowa State College but it was accredited in the basic engineering disciplines. The scholarship I had been offered was specific to the University so to use it I perforce must enroll there. The scholarship was from the Alice Granger fund which was administered by the Fort Dodge public schools. I have never investigated who Alice Granger was, perhaps I should do so as a matter of interest. Whoever she was, she was certainly a key factor in my life.

Several years ago, impelled by the realization of what she had meant to me, I wrote to the Fort Dodge schools and determined that the Alice Granger scholarship fund was still in existence. So I repaid the fund to the extend of two years’ current tuition to the university at the time I wrote the district. The scholarship as I received it was for $125/year, which was sufficient for tuition and a little beside. It was renewed for my second year, though there was no stipend for the summer session I spent in 1942 to finish up my engineering training.

What I repaid the fund was something like $3000 for two years’ tuition. A couple of years ago the Shell Companies Foundation has extended its matching gift program to include junior colleges as well, and I have considered further contributions to the Alice Granger fund but I have so far made no more.

Beginning with the 40th anniversary of my graduation from SUI I have made annual contributions to the Engineering Development Fund there. I guess I started in response to some mailing from the university on the passing of the 40th anniversary of my graduation. The initial contribution I made was, as I recall, $100, but in subsequent years it has increase to $1000 where it has remained. With the matching gift from the Shell Foundation, the amount to the college has been $2500–$3000.

When I worked for Shell in 1975 and 1976 after my retirement I put part of the earnings in a Keogh fund (later converted to an IRA) and I have been using this IRA for the contribution to SUI. The IRA still has (1997) between $5000 and $6000 in it so my contribution is funded for half a dozen years or so. What I will do when it runs out I haven’t decided, perhaps I shall not have to make a decision having expired by then.

Although the total amount I have given is not a large amount it has nonetheless qualified me for inclusion in the highest group of contributors to the university, termed the President’s Club. Not long ago I received a wall plaque acknowledging this.