A wonderful campus tour of Iowa Wesleyan, 65 years later

My first campus tour of Iowa Wesleyan College occurred as a high school senior in 1960. I remember very little of that campus tour. My second tour of the Iowa Wesleyan College campus occurred recently on May 30, 2025, and was both emotional and memorable.

I attended Iowa Wesleyan College in Mount Pleasant, Iowa from 1960-64 and graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree. I also met my wife of 59 years at IWC.

Beginning the college experience as a young person involves many things. Independence, excitement, new and more complex social situations, more advanced and difficult studies, and so on. Most students find their own way to successfully navigate college life and move on to the next phase of their life, which usually involves employment, marriage, raising a family, etc. This is exactly how it was for my wife and me. We both became educators, raised our two sons, and except for attending occasional Homecomings, the college experience mostly faded from our memories.

Fast forward to the present, and I am now an 82-year-old widower. My wife Marty recently passed away from Alzheimer’s, and I find myself not only dealing with the grief of her loss but also spending time reflecting on our life together. This reflection led me to the beginning of our relationship, Iowa Wesleyan College. Unfortunately, our alma mater, later called Iowa Wesleyan University, closed at the end of the 2023 school year.

I decided it would be good for me to visit our college campus to reflect and reminisce. I recently purchased a three wheeled E-trike as I have neuropathy in my feet and legs, and walking is difficult. Instead of driving the streets around the campus, I would ride my E-trike into the heart of the campus on the sidewalks and directly up to the buildings where we had classes and to the dormitories where we lived. So, on the beautiful sunny and 75-degree day of Friday May 30, 2025, I loaded the E-trike into my van and set off for Mount Pleasant, and my second campus tour of Iowa Wesleyan College, 65 years after my first tour.

Having been closed for two years, I was expecting the campus to be somewhat run-down and unkempt. To my absolute delight, the campus looked beautiful and well maintained. There were additional buildings that weren’t there when I attended, but I hope one can understand that my reflections and reminiscings were focused on the campus as I remembered it. When I reached the heart of the central campus and took in those beautiful old classroom buildings, the Student Union where Marty and I met, the trees, the sidewalks we walked to class (sometimes ran), I became a bit emotional.

I realized in that moment what an important time college was in my life and how fate had brought Marty and me here to meet, fall in love, and start our long and wonderful life together. It’s hard to describe how much I enjoyed the great memories that surfaced as I made my way around the campus. It also struck me that mine is a story similar to thousands of students who attended Iowa Wesleyan College, both before and after my time there.

I took some pictures of those beautiful old buildings and asked a passerby to take a picture of me in front of Hershey Hall, where I lived during my freshman year. I later joined Phi Delta Theta fraternity and moved out of Hershey Hall, but it was my important college starting point.

I concluded my second tour of Iowa Wesleyan College with lunch in my van in the small parking lot located on the northwest corner of campus. That parking lot is very special to me as it is where Marty and I shared our first kiss.

I would recommend the R & R (Reflect & Reminisce) campus tour to Iowa Wesleyan Alumni, especially older alums. I didn’t enter a single building, but I didn’t need to. The memories just came. It was therapeutic for me, and I plan to do it again.

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