Fifty years ago today, June 7, I flew to Stevens Point to live and teach. I have traveled here and there temporarily since, but basically, I have not left. I had spent college summers in Vermont and Maine but no winters, and I was a little doubtful that I could handle the cold. I was surprised to find that the winters were easier than the warmer, and therefore icier, winters of Maryland.
I went through graduate school with about six other men with the same major: statistics, measurement and experimental design. They, like me, had never heard of the town and they kidded me about moving, literally, to a house on Main Street. I took a course in grad school on the history of higher education. At the beginning of the last century, schooling beyond six grades was already "higher" and questionable. After all, how much schooling did a person need? Get those noses out of books and into the fields where some work of value could be done. The course made it clear that the "Northwest Territory" of what is now Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota had a new direction. Their constitutions set aside land from the start for public universities, and they made it clear that the job of these schools was to do research and solve problems that bugged people, not just teach what Aristotle had written.
In the history of higher education, the "Wisconsin Idea" that the borders of the campus are actually the borders of the whole state, is a famous and valuable one.
1968 is often cited as an especially tumultuous year and it seemed like a wonderful time to move to a lively but compact city. Our experience is limited but we do feel that a university town is a good bet. Lynn made a "History of Stevens Point" and in it, she said that the city is a good place to raise kids. It definitely has been, and a good place for grandkids and greatgrand kids as well. Over the years, we considered Delaware and Texas and we lived in La Crosse for a short time but the spirit, family and friendships in and around Point have won out every time.
