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the famed Hollywood Bowl (outdoor auditorium) Thursday night. He
is a personal friend of Mr. David Wynne, the British sculptor who
recently installed a giant sculptured fountain on our campus. We
believe it is the largest work of sculpture on the west coast of
America. Or the tallest. It is 38 feet tall, and consists of five
giant bronze birds, just rising in flight from an artificial lake.
When our new auditorium is built, this beautiful work of sculpture
will be directly in front of it. Mr. Wynne also has done a most
impressive bronze sculpture of Mr. Menuhin, which is to be put in
the entrance hall of our new Fine Arts Building, now under
construction.
Mr. Menuhin is coming to see the giant sculptured birds
(egrets), and also he says he wants to see "where you're going to
put my head," as he expressed it.
Mr. Simpson asked, "Where shall I bring Mr. Menuhin
first?" Yes, WHERE? We have no fit place to bring an
international celebrity, should one come to our campus. The proper
place would be, on any campus, the Administration building. But
our Administration building is a small building, originally built
in the horse-and-buggy days as a stable and haymow for horses. It
was later remodeled into a four-car garage, with servants'
apartments on the second floor (in the haymow!). It was in that
condition when we bought the original college property twenty-one
years ago. We remodeled it into a small office building, and put
a sign out front: "ADMINISTRATION BUILDING." But both Garner Ted
and I have had to move out, to make room for other needed offices.
We built offices for ourselves on the roof of the Library building.
Our Administration building is not presentable enough to
bring an international celebrity to it. Nor would I want to have
him brought through the Library and up to my office, although it is
nice enough once one gets there.
This interruption served to put dynamic EMPHASIS on the
very thing I am writing you about -- our dire, tragic, URGENT,
DESPERATE NEED of a new Administration building. If we had been
able -- as we should have been long before this -- to have built
our new Administration building -- already well along in planning
on the architects' drawing boards -- then THAT would be the place
to receive Mr. Menuhin.
And while I am on this subject, another international
luminary came to our campus to see this work of sculpture about a
month ago while I was still in England. He was Sir Alec Douglas-
Home, Britain's Prime Minister just before the present one.
At our conference, I had decided to move Mr. Roderick
Meredith, who is our director over all the ministers and churches
in the United States, beside being a faculty professor, and PLAIN
TRUTH editor, and Mr. Jon Hill, over to our Church Administration
offices, which we have leased over a drug store. That, also, is
off the campus. They need to be in close proximity to the business
office, the Registrar, the Dean, and those of Garner Ted and me.
Then I was going to move Mr. Elliott, who is also Dean of Students,
off campus in the building used by our maintenance departments.