BRANDENBURG, Dr. William Aaron

BRANDENBURG, PENFIELD, JAMES, MAXWELL, CARMICHAEL, CHRISTENEN, CHAPMAN

Posted By: Sharon R Becker (email)
Date: 11/10/2014 at 23:52:44

The Globe Gazette
Mason City, Cerro Gordo County, Iowa
Saturday, May 11, 1940, Page 18

THEY STARTED HERE
No. 9 in a Mason City Series of Success Stories

DR. WILLIAM AARON BRANDENBURG, College President

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It was no accident that Dr. W. A. Brandenburg reached the eminent position he now holds, as many Mason Cityans who knew him 30 years ago can testify.

For they know that his feat of building Kansas State Teachers college from a branch of Emporia State Normal with 1,416 students enrolled to one of America's outstanding teachers schools with an enrollment of more than 4,500 did not just happen. It took a combination of talents that few men have.

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Born in Iowa, William A. Brandenburg is a native of Clayton county. Last fall he reached his 70th birthday. He attended Drake university, receiving a Ph.B and M.A. degrees there, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, national honorary scholastic fraternity.He holds an honorary LL.D. from Monmouth college. He as married in 1893 to Alta Penfield of his native Clayton college.

Dr. Brandenburg knew that his life work lay in educational fields and in 1900 he procured his first important position along those lines, that of superintendent of thh city schools at Capitol Park, now part of Des Moines.

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Serving at Des Moines until 1905, he came to Mason City as superintendent of schools and it was here that he really began to make himself known in educational fields.

The superintendent quickly began to show those qualities that made him such an outstanding success as a college president. First of all, he had a remarkable mind. And in addition, he was active in community affairs, he showed considerable diplomacy - a requisite for a college president - and he was a good businessman.

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Older Mason Cityans who remember Dr. Brandenburg recall that he was a deeply religious man, being active in the affairs of the local Christian church. He was very well liked and was considered even in those days rather a strict man in regard to the addiction of tobacco and of course, more serious vicies. He refused to allow anyone, including the school janitor, to smoke on the school property at any time.

Dr. Brandenburg was prominent in teachers' work, and his keen mind and ability on the platform made him popular for addresses and teachers' institutes and similar gatherings of his fellow workers.

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As is usually the case in success stories, the school superintendent was a hard working man. He never shirked anopportunity for doing a good job and it is quite likely that this attitude has meant much in his climb to his present prominence.

Although he had never been paid a salary of more than $3,000 a year up to the time he left Mason City to take a much more remunerative and important position as superintendent of the schools at Oklahoma City. Dr. Brandenburg owned his own home while a resident here and also had some property in Minnesota.

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He rode a bicycle while at his post here, and it may be typical that just as he was about to leave for Oklahoma City, he undertook to sell the bike to R. L. James, who had recently come to the Mason City schools as secretary of the school board. However, Mr. James found the velocipede a little too high for him - Dr. Brandenburg is a big man - and so turned down the opportunity to purchase the venerable vechicle.

But even as promising as Dr. Brandenburg was, he was, like so many persons, apt to wonder sometimes if he had chosen the right profession. Mr. James recalls one afternoon when he stroke up and down in the office he maintained in what is now the Lincoln grade school, asking himself the familiar question: Should I have gone into something else? He recalled that he had spent approximately 25 years in the field of education and wondered if that time had been well spent.

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Subsequent events showed it was.

Going from here to Oklahoma City, Dr. Brandenburg quickly showed his value there and in the period from 1911 to 1913 was a member of the state board of education.

He then accepted an appointment as president of the newly founded Kansas State Teachers college at Pittsburg, Kans., and went to that school as its first and to date [1940] only president. The school, prior to his arrival as its president, had been a branch of the Emporia State Normal school.

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In Kansas, Dr. Brandenburg has been a member of the state board of education since 1919. At varioius times in the interim since 1913 he has served as a member of the classification committee of the American Association of Teachers colleges, a member of the National Council of Education, and as a member of the executive committee of the North Central association of Colleges and Secondary Schools.

But his reord at Pittsburg is the thing to which Mason Cityans and all Iowans can most point with pride.

When the former Mason City school superintendent took charge of the school, it was known as the State Manual Training Normal. There were two buildings on a 20 acre campus and 40 instructors composed the faculty. Today there are 14 buildings on a campus of 55 acres and 123 persons make up the faculty. The enrollment has better than tripled.

Although the curriculum of the school had been given a college trend by 1912, much remained to be done and over the years Dr. Brandenburg has made great changes. At first he curriculum has broadened and intensified and the training of teachers of every kind was undertaken.

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Later it was discovered that courses necessary to accomplish the aims desired covered practically the whole range of liberal arts, so a liberal arts degree was added to that of bachelor of science for teachers. And in 1929 graduate courses leading to the degree of master of arts were added.

So in the past 27 years just completed, Dr. Brandenburg has done a remarkable job of buidling, one that will do him and the state of Iowa a credit for many years to come. He is responsible for a monument that will live long after him, a tribute to his ability and worth to socity.

Photograph courtesy of Globe-Gazette

Transcription by Sharon R. Becker, May of 2014

~ ~ ~ ~ ~
A Standard History of Kansas and Kansans
by William E. Connelley, Secretary of the Kansas State Historical Society, Topeka KS
Pp. 1989-90. Vol. IV. Lewis Publishing Company, Chicago. 1918.

WILLIAM AARON BRANDENBURG

WILLIAM AARON BRANDENBURG as president of the Pittsburg Manual Training Normal School, has one of the most important positions in the Kansas educational field. While he has been identified with educational affairs in this state only a few years, that time has sufficed to indicate his broad qualifications and his unusual ability as a teacher and administrator. Mr. Brandenburg was formerly superintendent of schools of Oklahoma City and was also well known as a leader in school work in his native state of Iowa.

He was born in Clayton County, Iowa, October 10, 1869. His ancestry originally had its seat in Berlin, Germany. His great-great-grandfather emigrated in colonial days from Germany and settled in Maryland. Mr. Brandenburg's father Francis Marion Brandenburg was born in the State of Ohio, October 6, 1846. He was reared in McLean County, Illinois, followed farming all his life, and in 1906 retired from the farm and lived at Des Moines, Iowa. He was never a resident of Kansas, but died while on a visit to his son in Pittsburg on April 2, 1916. Politically he was a democrat. He belonged to the Grangers' organization and for many years was an elder in the Christian Church. He was married in Clayton County, Iowa, to Enfield Maxwell, who was born in Clayton County, Iowa, in June, 1844, and is now living at Des Moines. Their children were: William A.; Walter E., who is pastor of the First Christian Church at Parsons, Kansas; A. W., a farmer in Clayton County, Iowa; Dr. George C., who is a member of the faculty of Purdue University, at Lafayette, Indiana; Amy, wife of Henry Carmichael, a farmer in Clayton County; Mrs. Laura Christensen, whose husband is foreman in the Newbury Nursery at Mitchell, South Dakota.

William A. Brandenburg grew up on a farm in Clayton County, Iowa, attended the public schools there and the high school at Volga, and for a year and a half taught in the rural schools of his native county and for two and a half years was assistant superintendent at Volga. His ambition from the start was to get a higher education, and in 1895 he entered Drake University at Des Moines, where he completed the course leading to the degree of Bachelor of Philosophy. On graduating in 1900 he accepted the position of superintendent of the Park Avenue School of Des Moines, where he remained two years. He was then superintendent for three years of the Capital Park School in Des Moines, and from 1905 to 1910 was superintendent of the public school system of Mason City, Iowa.

Since then his active work in the educational field has been in the Southwest. In January, 1910, he was unanimously elected superintendent of the public schools of Oklahoma City, which position he held until August, 1913, when without formal application he was called to the presidency of the State Manual Training Normal at Pittsburg, Kansas, and has since been its able executive.

From 1911 to 1913 Mr. Brandenburg was a member of the State Board of Education in Oklahoma. During the summers of 1903-04-05 he taught in the department of education in the Drake University at Des Moines. He is a member of the National Educational Association, the National Society for the Promotion of Industrial and Vocational Education, and a member of the National Educational Council. Politically Mr. Brandenburg is an independent. When only twenty-two years of age he was elected justice of the peace in Sperry Township in his native county in Iowa on the democratic ticket. He is an elder in the Christian Church and fraternally is a member of Pittsburg Lodge, No. 187 Ancient Free and Accepted Masons, Pittsburg Chapter, No. 58, Royal Arch Masons, Pittsburg Commandery, No. 29, Knights Templar, Mirza Temple of the Mystic Shrine at Pittsburg, belongs to the Knights of Pythias and the Modern Woodmen of America at Mason City, Iowa, and the Brotherhood of American Yeomen at Des Moines.

On June 22, 1893, at Volga, Iowa, he married Miss Alta Penfield, a daughter of William A. and Lucy A. (Chapman) Penfield. Both her parents are now deceased. Her father was a merchant. Lola, the oldest child of Mr. and Mrs. Brandenburg, is a graduate of the Pittsburg Manual Training Normal School with the degree Bachelor of Science and is now a teacher in the Pittsburg High School. Amy is a sophomore in the Manual Training Normal School. Merrill is in the senior class of the Normal High School, while Harold is a high school freshman, Helen is in the third grade of the grammar school, and William A. Jr., in the first grade.

NOTE: William Aaron Brandenburg died October 29, 1940 at Richmond Heights, Missouri. His wife, Altana Adelaide (Penfield) Brandenburg, was born on July 26, 1869, Volga, Iowa, and died January 24, 1956, Pittsburg, Kansas. They were interred at Highland Park Cemetery, Pittsburg, Kansas.

Transcription and note by Sharon R. Becker, May of 2014

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