The beginning, as Rogers and Hammerstein taught us all through the loveable, unsolvable problem of Maria, is a very good place to start. And so I will begin this blog journey with the beginning of Luther in my life and the beginning of Luther itself.
It could be said that Luther was in my life even before I was, since I owe my existence to my parents' meeting and falling in love as two music majors in Nordic choir. But such couplings and the Luther babies they yield are almost disturbingly common - a topic for another post - and while my life would not be without Luther, I wasn't aware of the college until our first visit to Decorah after returning to the Midwest from Arizona.
I would have to check with my folks, but I suspect I must have been no more than four years old. We moved to Dubuque on January 1st, 1990, and I can't imagine that after three years away from Iowa my parents would have waited any longer than the first summer to make the two-hour drive up to Decorah. Whatever my age, I remember the occasion - or at least several moments from it - rather vividly. I remember us happily going into the Union and getting 1 cent gumballs at the information desk (my dad always got red ones from that long-gone machine, and from most others for that matter). I remember us walking up the steps of the CFL entrance with great anticipation to see if the doors might be unlocked. They weren't. I remember us walking across the bridge to check out Farwell, where my parents exhibited a strange mix of emotions - wonder and pride at the size and novelty of the tall new dorm in the valley with a bridge to Upper Campus, but also a feeling of...what was it, dismissal? almost distrust? of something that was not part of their experience. Most of all though, it was this intense rush of excited and sentimental emotions from my parents that make me clearly recall these moments from that hot, sunny, summer day in Decorah.
My first time at Luther.
It would take a couple more childhood visits and several summer music camps to grow my own love of Luther. I remember when we returned the next summer first being struck by the same graceful bluff across the valley that caught the eye and heart of Elizabeth Koren, Orville Running, and so many others; I also remember somtime in my second or third year as a Dorian camper first detecting something special in the spirit of the place and a desire to be a part of it in some way. But that first summer visit was undoubtedly when the seed was planted.
This leads us to the planting of Luther itself and a truly beautiful quote remembering the college in its seedling form: sixteen students and two professors in a humble parsonage tucked in a "smiling valley" outside Halfway Creek, Wisconsin. The quote is the words of Brynjolf Hovde, who was one of the original students that started as part of the Norwegian consort at Concordia University in St. Louis and graduated from a brand spanking new Luther College. It describes that fateful first year in a way that has only grown more beautiful and appropriate in the years hence:
"Here, in peace, undisturbed by the noise of the world, the plant began to grow which in later years became so large a tree, with so many and varied fruits."
I don't know when exactly he wrote this, but dude was in college in 1861, so it certainly wasn't recently. And it definitely wasn't any time in the last fifty years because it (like most other history-type facts and quotes I'll reference in this blog) comes from Luther College: 1861-1961, published in (you guessed it) 1961. Point being: that tree has gotten much larger and has had many more fruits than the late Mr. Hovde probably ever thought possible.
The image of the growing tree speaks well to the college as it exists in its observable forms - the campus, buildings, endeavors, alumni, and so on - but it also speaks to the unique, palpable spirit that resides beneath the low canopies of the burr oaks and maples, in the ringing chords and sacred silence of the CFL, in the babbling flow of the Upper Iowa, in the cool summer sunsets over the Oneota Valley, and in the hearts of we happy few who have inherited it from the place itself and the people who have come here before us. It is a noble spirit of humble pride and quiet wisdom, and by its inspiration and the work of our collective hands, the tree of small beginnings will only continue to grow.
