"Gus" Minear - 50 Year Certificate

MINEAR, PIERSON

Posted By: Volunteer - Cathy Joynt Labath
Date: 6/25/2006 at 19:23:22

Mount Pleasant News; Mount Pleasant, Henry, Iowa; May 26, 1948

HIS GRANDFATHER HELPED BUILD OLD MAIN AT IWC

A member of the class of 1898 who will be honored by Iowa Wesleyan College with a fifty year certificate at this commencement is A.C. Minear of Kilbourne, Iowa.

"Gus" as he is familiarly known to scores of alumni and former students of Iowa Wesleyan, after graduation pursued his studies at Northwestern University where he received his Master's degree in 1902. For some years he taught Mathematics at the University of Southern California and for the rest of his active live was a teacher of mathematics and general agricultural subjects. Upon retirement he returned to the old family homestead and is living the placid life of a gentleman farmer.

Mr. Minear is one of thirteen of the same name listed in the History and Alumni Record of Iowa Wesleyan College. Of his own immediate family there was George L., who later became a prominent minister in the Iowa-Des Moines Conference and A. Bruce, a national leader in YMCA work and who died just a few years ago while connected with Iowa Wesleyan. Of the sisters, there were three, only one of whom, Ida K., graduated from Iowa Wesleyan and is now deceased.

Of the second generation, Wesley, Craig, Ruth and Paul have brought distinction to their Alma Mater, the boys in the realm of religion and education, and Ruth as a foreign missionary in Peru and a home missionary in California.

To a News reporter Gus told the following interesting story. His maternal grandfather, a Reverend Mr. Pierson, came home from the Civil War in which he had served as Chaplain with the Union forces. He entered the ministry and along with other Methodist preachers helped build Old Main. They mixed and carried mortar and laid the bricks with their own hands. The college was without money so they paid these preachers a nominal wage in scrip. Upon the death of her father, Gus's mother preserved these evidences of indebtedness and upon her decease his father carfully kept them.

When the Minear boys and girls began coming to Iowa Wesleyan these scrip payments were accepted at face value and became the foundation stone of the education of a family. Whatever may have been Father Pierson's contribution to Christian education as a minister, the labor of his hands has been fruitful in multiplying generations.