by Harry Wilkins

Bequeathed by the town’s founders, the closing of Tabor College in 1927 was the end of a living legacy. For 61 years the groundbreaking institution welcomed all students regardless of race or gender and it was the pride of Tabor. Unfortunately, the school couldn’t overcome financial challenges and closed. What has been largely forgotten, however, was an attempt to reopen the school in the 1930s.

The idea of the college’s rebirth began in the mind of Clark W. Howard, a Methodist minister from Sidney, who regularly drove through Tabor and saw the empty school buildings as a terrible waste. He thought the structures might be given new life but for a different kind of school. At the time, the country was suffering from the effects of the Great Depression and many young people couldn’t find work or afford the cost of a higher education. Howard planned to start a self-help two-year junior college that would put students to work several hours a day on projects and on a college-owned farm producing milk, butter, cheese, and produce. While learning ‘the dignity of work,’ they would pay for their room and board. His idea was met with an enthusiastic response from community leaders and, in the spring of 1935, was given the green light from the Tabor City Council.

Within weeks Howard was actively soliciting funds with the help of trustee Dr. Brownlow Miller, Tabor’s longtime medical practitioner. After incorporation, the school leased the empty college buildings from Tabor for one dollar a year and purchased the 52-acre Issac Rose farm, located on the east edge of Tabor. The farm’s eight-room house would be used for the boy’s dorm.

The financial needs of the new school were considerable. The first year’s budget for 1936-37 was $8,000, with $3,000 coming from tuition ($50 per term) and the rest from work projects and donations. The total cost of supporting a single student for one year was estimated to be $400. Clark was a World War I veteran and had close ties to the American Legion, having served as state chaplain, and he relied heavily on their support—within a year over $15,000 had been raised through Legion posts in Iowa, including 40 pigs sent from the Pisgah post. Omaha’s Legionaries donated $500. Civic and church groups organized fundraisers; clothing, furniture and kitchen utensils were collected; and donated livestock and poultry went to the ‘Rancho,’ a name given to the farm by students. Even Tabor’s Isis Movie Theater donated ten percent of its receipts on a special college weekend. Howard and George C. Wise, the newly hired dean of students, became tireless promoters of the college, meeting with civic leaders, social organizations and high school students throughout southwest Iowa. They were frequent guests on radio stations as far away as Mason City. After one interview, radio station WHO in Des Moines donated six new sewing machines to the domestic science department.

The college opened September 14, 1936, with 27 boys and girls. There were seven faculty members and later, a farm manager. There were four terms during the year, including summer school. A continuing challenge, though, was the condition of the college buildings, neglected for almost a decade and in dire need of repair and updating. Woods Hall was initially used for classes and dormitory space but as repairs were made, the school spread out to Adams and Gaston Halls. As 1937 dawned, school administrators were optimistic with various projects underway. Tabor’s water main was extended from the Methodist Church to the farm, repairs were being made to college buildings, and the school received accreditation by the Iowa Clark W. Howard Department of Education. By September 1937 enrollment reached 46, with students from Iowa, Mississippi, Nebraska, and South Dakota.

The school received a big boost in February 1938 when a resident work training program, sponsored by the National Youth Administration (NYA), was secured as part of the New Deal’s Works Projects Administration. The NYA boys would work in the trades learning carpentry, plumbing, and electrical work—the girls were assigned to home economics and restaurant studies. Seven NYA trainees began work in March and were assigned to the college farm and to building repair projects. The college supplied materials and received $15 per student monthly. The total NYA contract brought $3,200 to the school, along with a separate faculty to manage the program.

The upswing continued throughout 1938. Despite the modest size of the student body, the college organized a band and orchestra, under the direction of Dean Wise, and the ‘Pioneers’ basketball team was coached by Dr. Miller (a girls team came later). An agricultural department was added to the curriculum and a college bakery was opened on main street, which included a soda fountain. The outlet was the only bakery in town and sold bread, milk and pastries. When the college celebrated its first commencement with eight graduates, on June 8, 1938, the Tabor Beacon proudly proclaimed that “Southwest Iowa now has a college which is a growing concern” The mood remained hopeful in 1939 fueled by donations, fundraisers and work projects. Allis Chalmers donated a tractor, local nurseries gifted fruit trees and plants, and several hybrid corn companies sent seed corn. An Omaha firm donated a carload of coal and electric lighting was installed in Gaston Hall. A corn drive was organized in Mills and Fremont Counties netting over 2000 bushels for the school, college girls knitted scarves for sale and boys husked corn while maintaining a herd of Guernsey cattle. The farm sold 70 quarts of milk a day. Bragging rights were earned when the school’s herd bull, Roxie’s Ace, was entered in the American Guernsey Cattle Club’s national register. Another NYA contract brought in $21,000 which provided work for 65 NYA boys to repair campus buildings. Forward momentum began to fade in 1940 when it became increasingly clear that the original financial model was not working. With the school’s budget having reached $25,300, day-to-day operating expenses weren’t being met without a steady stream of donations and during hard times, money was drying up. To make matters worse, the school had spent a good deal on needed repairs and equipment. In four years, expenditures totaled $6300 on buildings, $3000 for equipment, and $4,200 on farm property and equipment. Simply heating college buildings amounted to over $1,600 annually.

Around town, enthusiasm for the college was waning. In a spirited response, the "Tabor Beacon" ran an editorial in May 1940, shortly after the graduation of eight boys and ten girls, proclaiming the school was in fact an asset to the town. Not only was business being generated for local merchants, but students were “raising social standards” in the community. Another editorial printed two months later expressed “difficulty in understanding this apathy,” with the spirits of the college and town being “wedded as one.” But President Clark understood the dire straits the college was navigating—teacher salaries were cut or withheld, and unpaid bills were piling up. To save the school, Howard reluctantly entered talks with community leaders in Council Bluffs to move the school there, renamed the National Service College. The idea had the backing of the city’s Chamber of Commerce, but the idea quietly died due to an inability to find suitable buildings.

Despite an increase in applications, there were rumors the college would close in the fall of 1940, its fifth year. Against the odds it opened and with a new two-year teacher training certification program. But it wasn’t enough to stop the financial hemorrhaging. The school’s self-help foundation received a blow when the college bakery was shuttered in October 1940. Within two weeks two students ran an ad in the Beacon asking for work in return for a room.

The rumor that President Howard was leaving the college was confirmed when he resigned in January 1941. In February the school temporarily closed due to insufficient funds, prompting the trustees to dispose of the farm’s herd and equipment at a public sale. The NYA contract expired in March, and just before the school’s last graduation ceremony, on May 29, 1941, the Tabor Beacon ran ‘notice to creditors’ ads for those who had claims against the college. But the curtain had not yet dropped. In July Robert F. O’Brian, former president of Morningside College in Sioux City and briefly the Iowa Secretary of State, was hired as president. Whether he knew it or not, O’Brian had taken the helm of a sinking ship. Many thought it was already on the bottom. O’Brian believed an entirely new direction was needed for Tabor College. Henceforth, it would be a four-year institution without a self-help program and admit only boys to be trained for more practical professions like civil service, the armed forces, or business management. Another aspect of O’Brian’s plan, described as ‘odd’ and ‘off the beaten path’ by area newspapers, was his intent to admit only boys who had graduated in the lower half of their high school class— honor students would not be accepted. The new president wanted to prove that given a chance, even below-average students could make the grade and become successful.

The school was surprised in the summer of 1942 by an endowment of business properties and 160 acres of farmland from William and Margaret Gilman in Sioux City. But it was too little, too Student Jake Jones sporting a Tabor College briefcase, 1940 late, and the college limped on with a handful of students. Feeble attempts at introducing new programs which might attract more students failed and bills couldn’t be paid. Eula Woodlands, head of the math department and college bookkeeper, complained of juggling creditors while trying to convince President O’Brian that paying local merchants should be a priority, as “they got only four cents on the dollar last time.” The school was dissolving. Robert Pugh, head of the English Department, left to join the army followed by Dean Wise, who donated his personal library of 1,500 books to the college library on the way out. Eula resigned some months later and began teaching at Tabor High School.

In the spring of 1943, Paul Haas was the last student to leave the college when he joined the Ringling Brothers Circus in New York City. He had been described by locals as a “one man student body.” In September the Estes Coffee Shop brought a lawsuit to recover the cost of providing student meals, which was settled out of court, and the city hired attorney Arthur Mauk to take action to repossess college buildings after O’Brian refused to turn them over. Since the school had effectively ceased operation, many in Tabor were also irked that he continued to use the title of ‘college president’ when traveling. After learning of the college’s true condition, the Gilmans successfully petitioned the district court in Woodbury to revoke their gift. The judge declared the gift void on the basis that O’Brian had told the benefactors that Tabor College was Episcopal and owned the buildings. The final act occurred in February 1944 when an article in the Des Moines Register informed readers that Robert O’Brian had moved Tabor College to their city and was looking for suitable buildings. Nothing came of it. The Tabor Beacon threw in the towel, evident in their comment that “The day of the smalltown college has definitely passed.” The failure of the New Tabor College can be attributed to several factors, including the effects of the Depression and later, the start of World War II, a time when the armed forces and defense industries were absorbing manpower on an unprecedented scale (most small colleges suffered and many closed during the war). But first among the challenges and the one that most certainly doomed the enterprise was clearly stated by William Brooks, president of the first Tabor College for almost 30 years: “If you ever want to start a college without money, don’t do it.”