Centre Vice Presidential Debate 2000

You've probably heard all the basics about Centre College by this time. But there are lots of little known facts about the College that are fascinating in their own right. Check out the answers to these questions to get some interesting sidelights and anecdotes about Centre.

Which alumnus was Centre's first U.S. vice president?

Centre counts two United States vice presidents among its alumni. The first, John Cabell Breckinridge, Class of 1838, was elected on the Democratic ticket with James Buchanan in 1856.

Breckinridge was just 17 when he graduated from Centre. John C. Young, a brother-in-law, was president of the College at the time, and an uncle, William Breckinridge, was on the faculty.

John C. Breckinridge went on to become a lawyer, Kentucky state legislator, U.S. representative and U.S. senator, and vice president of the United States, all by the age of 45. A champion of states’ rights and a charismatic leader with a charming personal manner, his only political defeat came when he lost the 1860 presidential race to Abraham Lincoln. During the Civil War, he served as a Confederate officer and, briefly, as Confederate secretary of war.

Despite being the most prominent Kentuckian to join the Confederacy, Breckinridge spent his time after the Civil War working for peace and reconciliation. While he “. . .had not the tools to keep the Union from crumbling or to buttress the unsteady walls of the Confederacy, he was an artisan born for the work of rebuilding the two into one,” according to William Davis’ prize-winning biography, Breckinridge.

The Breckinridges were a prominent Kentucky family. Breckinridge County was named for J.C. Breckinridge’s grandfather. Centre’s Breckinridge Hall is named for J.C.’s uncle Robert, a long-time professor at Danville Theological Seminary, which built Breck Hall.

For more information on John C. Breckinridge, see The Kentucky Encyclopedia (John Kleber, editor), Proud Kentuckian: John C. Breckinridge, 1821-75 (by Frank Heck, former Centre professor), or Breckinridge: Statesman, Soldier, Symbol (by William Davis).
14 February 2000

Which U.S. vice president married a Centre president's daughter?

Adlai E. Stevenson, Centre Class of 1859, was United States vice president during Grover Cleveland’s second term as president (1893-1897). His wife, whom he married in 1866, was Letitia Green, daughter of Centre president Lewis Green (president 1857-1863).

Together Adlai and Letitia founded a political dynasty. Their grandson Adlai E. Stevenson II was a governor, diplomat, and two-time candidate for president (in 1952 and 1956). Their great-grandson Adlai E. Stevenson III was a U.S. senator.

The death of his father in 1857 had caused Stevenson to leave Centre early and return home to Illinois, where he read law. He became interested in politics after hearing the 1858 Lincoln-Douglas debates, and he later was elected to two (nonconsecutive) terms in the U.S. House of Representatives. He served as first assistant postmaster during Cleveland’s first term, and four years later was considered the vice presidential candidate who could best unite all factions of the Democratic party. Although he later ran unsuccessfully for vice president with William Jennings Bryan in 1900 and as gubernatorial candidate in Illinois in 1908, the politically moderate Stevenson was considered a skilled statesman who never made an enemy of a political adversary. He died in Chicago in 1914.

What is Centre's oldest building?

An important example of early Greek Revival architecture, Old Centre opened its doors in September 1820. It was the College’s first—and for several years, only—building.

In 1819, the Centre trustees had appropriated $10,000 to build “a plain brick building, uniting commodiousness with neatness and simplicity.” The task of construction fell to Robert Russel Jr., a locally prominent craftsman whose flair for design can also been seen in Horky House (Centre’s admission building) and Trinity Episcopal Church, downtown.
Originally, Old Centre was a modest two-story structure. The two wings and front columns were added in 1841. The back columns did not appear until a century later.

In its 180-year history, Old Centre has served a number of functions. Early on it housed a grammar school and the library, as well as classrooms and an apartment for the president. During the Civil War, it was a hospital first for Confederate soldiers and, after the 1862 battle at nearby Perryville, Union soldiers. (Meanwhile, classes went on in the new Sayre Library.)
With the completion of Old Main as the primary academic building in 1871, Old Centre became the “College Home,” where students could rent rooms for $8 a week and dine in the refectory for $1.50 a week. Until it closed in 1912, the law school occupied the south wing.

In recent decades, Old Centre has been the main administration building, although it since the 1991 renovation, it also includes a classroom and meeting rooms.

Old Centre is listed in the National Register of Historic Places and in the Smithsonian Guide to Historic America.
29 February 2000

What is the Norton Center's Russian connection?

It’s true that Rudolf Nureyev and Mikhail Baryshnikov, both Russian emigres, have danced at the Norton Center. But the building itself, site of the vice presidential debate at Centre on October 5, also has ties of a sort to the U.S.S.R.

Of course, one might first wonder how Centre came to have such an arts mecca, capable of attracting not only the world’s greatest dancers but also actress Lynn Redgrave, violinist Itzhak Perlman, cellist Yo-Yo Ma, tenor José Carreras, singer Ella Fitzgerald, not to mention the Russian National Ballet and the Moscow Philharmonic. The Boston Pops had so much fun last year they’re returning for a second performance later this month. And soprano Joan Sutherland once described the 1,500-seat Newlin Hall as the finest she’d ever sung in.

Back in the late 1960s, Thomas Spragens (Centre’s president at the time) and Chauncey Newlin ’25 (a New York City lawyer and chair of Centre’s board of trustees) decided the College needed a showcase facility that would expose students to the very best in cultural opportunities.

Now called the Norton Center for the Arts, after a Centre trustee who made things happen for the arts at Centre, it first opened in 1974 as the Regional Arts Center (which is why denizens of the center are still sometimes called “Rackies”). The architect was William Wesley Peters of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation. A brilliant designer, he also had a rather interesting personal life. One of his wives was the daughter of Frank Lloyd Wright; another, the daughter of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.

Who is the Breckinridge in Breckinridge Hall?

John Cabell Breckinridge, Class of 1838 and Centre’s first U.S. vice president, would be a reasonable guess.

Instead, the honor belongs to the Rev. Robert J. Breckinridge, uncle and mentor to John C., prominent Presbyterian minister, and a founder of the Danville Theological Seminary. The seminary built Breck Hall in 1892 to house students, classrooms, and the seminary library. Had its trustees only known that less than a decade later the seminary would move to Louisville, perhaps they would not have authorized the $25,000 to build such a “commodious” structure.

Established in 1853 as the premier Presbyterian seminary in the West, Danville Theological Seminary had close ties to Centre College. Its first classes were held in Old Centre, and in later years Centre faculty would also teach in the seminary. Nevertheless, the two remained separate institutions

When Presbyterians split after the Civil War, the southern church founded its own institution, Central University, in Richmond, Kentucky. Eventually Centre and Central merged, the two seminaries became the Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, and Central’s buildings became part of the campus at Eastern Kentucky University. The history of 19th-century higher education in Kentucky is indeed tangled.

And what of Robert J. Breckinridge? Trained as a lawyer, he became a Presbyterian minister after a near-fatal illness. He was ardently pro-Union and used his pulpit to preach against the wrongheadedness of Secession. During his six-year tenure as state superintendent of public instruction, he increased enrollment more than eightfold and a earned reputation as the father of the public school system in Kentucky. Later he was instrumental in persuading the Presbyterians to locate their seminary in Danville (Indiana was a strong contender). He taught at Danville Theological Seminary from 1853 until 1869 and died in Danville in 1871 at the age of 71.

Is Centre College really the exact geographical center of the state?

I It must be since, as every Centre student knows, there’s a little marker set in the ground outside the library that proves it. Printed on the disk are the official-looking words “U.S. Coast & Geodetic Survey.”

The only trouble is, the marker proves no such thing. In fact, Campbellsville University in Taylor County has a similar marker—and its students make a similar claim.

The marker is actually part of a national network of geodetic measurements. (A geodetic or geodesic line is the shortest line between two points on a mathematically defined surface.) According to a 1935 newspaper account, government surveyors came to Danville that year to relocate and check certain geodetic measurements. The marker outside the library was at the base of the surveyors’ observational tower. Another marker was placed outside Carnegie. Together the two discs made it possible for engineers and other surveyors to take a “pure bearing” line, the newspaper explained.

Nevertheless, as the College’s founders considered names for their college in Danville (including Kentucky College and, later, the American Bible and Missionary College), location won the day. “The present title [Centre College] was adopted on account of its central position,” wrote historian Robert Davidson in 1847.

Nobody now knows for certain if Centre’s founders chose the spelling they did or just used the spelling common at the time. But perhaps Ann Landers said it best. In a 1981 column about American versus British spellings she wrote: “As for centre, that also belongs to the theatre of the absurd—except in the case of Centre College in Kentucky, which happens to be one of the finest small schools in the nation.”

And what about the exact center of the state? That too lacks a definitive answer. But a University of Kentucky geographer once used average latitude and longitude to make a guess. His calculations put the exact geographical center of the state inside the military base at Fort Knox.

What is Centre's connection to steel magnate Andrew Carnegie?

Andrew Carnegie made a fortune in steel, and then gave much of it away to build libraries: a total of more than 2,500. Most of these were community or public libraries, but not all.

In 1905 Carnegie first proposed giving Centre $30,000 for a library on the condition that the College match the amount to provide an endowment for the library’s upkeep. It took a few years to raise the additional money, but Centre’s Carnegie Library finally opened in 1913. After Doherty Library was built in 1966, the Carnegie building served as the admission office, bookstore, and campus post office. It now houses offices and a dining room.

A further connection came about in 1919 when Carnegie’s only daughter, Margaret, married Roswell Miller Jr., a grandson of Centre’s ninth president William C. Roberts. (Roberts was president from 1898 until his death in 1903.)

What is C6-H0?

On October 29, 1921, the Centre College football team defeated Harvard University before a crowd of 42,000 at Harvard. Centre’s unexpected victory made banner headlines around the country, and many still call the game the “upset of the century.”

Overjoyed students of the time immortalized the final score—C6-H0—in a formula painted on buildings, bushes, even, according ot a contemporary newspaper account, a cow. For many years it appeared across the front of Old Centre, and it can still be seen today on the side of the campus post office building.

Harvard was the reigning national champion in 1921 and had not lost a game in five years. But Centre had Bo MiMillin ’21, the feist Texas quarterback who scored the only touchdown of the game, not to mention an impressive 25-2 record of its own. Perhaps the players’ habit of praying before each game—which earned them the neichname “Praying Colonels”—also helped. (The “praying” part is said to date to a 1917 game with the Universyt of Kentucky when reporters overheard the Centre coach suggest the team say a prayer. In what may have been mere coinsidence, the Colonels won.) Most of Centrew’s 250 students had to miss the game, however. The faculty refused to cancel classes.

In 1996, Harvard considered, but eventually declined, a 75th anniversary rematch.

When did the first women graduate from Centre?

In 1883 Leila Sara McKee and Margaret Eleanor Randolph, received degrees from Centre. The two were daughters of Centre professors and had taken a regular schedule of course work. However in granting the degrees, the board of trustees noted the two women were special cases and not a step toward co-education.

Four decades later, Centre took over the assets and buildings of Kentucky College for Women and reopened it in 1926 as the “women’s department of Centre College.” Female students remained on the KCW campus (where Danville High School is today). Although there was one faculty and joint social and nonacademic activities, classes were strictly separate under a system of “coordinate” education. The first female graduates of the combined institution graduated in 1929.

Over the years, practicality demanded increasing class integration. Men would come to the women’s campus for music and physical education classes (the women had the only swimming pool), while women took first science and then other classes at the men’s campus.

True co-education came to Centre in 1962, when female students moved into new North Campus residences on Main Street, adjacent to the old campus. The trustees traded the old KCW campus for the property where the Norton Center now stands (formerly the site of the old Danville High School).

The legacy of Centre’s separation of the sexes remains today in the granting each year of two valedictorian prizes, one to the top female graduate and the other to the top male.

What is the fire in the front yard?

A fire—or at least at a flame—has been burning in front of the library since 1969. The oldest of Centre’s outdoor sculptures, The Flame, by Belgian artist John Somville, was installed on October 17, 1969.

Made of bronze, the sculpture is 11 feet high and weights 2,000 pounds. The plaster original was cut in seven pieces, shipped to a foundry in Michigan, then cast separately by the lost-wax process and welded into the final sculpture. According to an article in the December 1969 Centrepiece, The Flame is “a symbolic representation of the torch of knowledge which appears on Centre’s official seal.”

Another Somville sculpture is the buckeye wood Wave that floats above the stairs in Young Hall.

Somville was sculptor in residence at Centre for a few years during the late 1960s and early 1970s, while his wife, Marilyn Feller Somville, taught music and eventually headed the music program.

Dottie Smith ’69 donated the sculpture as a sesquicentennial gift to the College in honor of her father. She and Jay van Arsdale ’70 both served as assistants on the work.

What is the Norton Center's original brass?

There’s a lot of brass at the Norton Center for the Arts, but long before Vince DiMartino and the CentreTrumpets, there was Ex Astris, the 14-foot brass sculpture that greets visitors to the Norton Center. The name means “from the stars.”

An advisory committee recommended a sculpture to complete the then brand new arts center, an anonymous donor gave the money, and the College commissioned Louisville artist Tom Lear.

Ex Astris was dedicated on October 23, 1978, with these words: “It does indeed evoke the spirit of the creative artist through its reaching, seeking, soaring qualities.” Almost 20 years later Ex Astris became the symbol for the installation of John Roush, Centre’s 20th president.

What is Centre's connection to Herman Melville?

Centre’s newest outdoor sculpture—Palace of Memory—was carved by Thomas Melville Chapin, a multi-great grandson of the author of Moby Dick. Some observers see a smiling whale in the 5-1/2 ton carving, but the artist calls it an Egyptian scarab beetle. It arrived on campus on April 20, a gift to the College from a small group of faculty, staff, and friends.

The work, which students have already dubbed “the bug,” features a carved element of African red granite set amidst more than 200 feet of serpentine, grassy mound in front of Olin Hall. Almost entirely hidden from view are 135 inscriptions suggested by the campus community that appear on the scarab’s face as “a shorthand version of what it is that Centre is remembering,” according to the artist. A list of the quotations and rubbings done before the stone was flipped will be displayed in the library.

Why a scarab? “I’ve always loved the colossal red granite scarab in the British Museum,” says Chapin.

What landmark civil rights dissent has ties to Centre?

On May 15, 1896, the United States Supreme Court made “separate but equal” the law of the land when it agreed that Homer Plessy, a Louisianan who was one-eighth black, could not use the 14th Amendment’s prohibition of racial discrimination to claim a seat in the “white” car of a train.

The lone dissent came from John Marshall Harlan, Centre Class of 1850, who is widely acclaimed as one of the Supreme Court’s greatest justices.
“Our Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens,” Harlan wrote in his famous rebuttal to Plessy v. Ferguson. “The destinies of the two races, in this country, are indissolubly linked together, and the interests of both require that the common government of all shall not permit the seeds of race hate to be planted under the sanction of law.”

Harlan’s opinion did not achieve majority support until 1954, when the Supreme Court overturned “separate but equal” in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka.

Known as the “Great Dissenter,” Harlan was born near Danville, followed two brothers to Centre, and sat on the high court for almost 34 years, until his death in 1911. He wrote 1,161 opinions, including 316 dissents. Many of his dissents have become judicial landmarks.

Who is the only justice to have served in all three branches of the Federal government before joining the Supreme Court?

Fred Vinson ‘09, Law ’11 is best known around campus for his continuing attendance at sporting events despite his death in 1953 (thanks to Phi Delta Theta’s tradition of bringing his portrait to the games). Most will recognize his name on a quad residence hall. And sports enthusiasts may recall that he was offered—but declined—an opportunity to head Major League Baseball in the 1940s.

Reference works, however, remember Vinson better for his lifetime of public service and his experience in all three branches of the Federal government.

During 13 years in the U.S. House of Representatives (D-Ky.), he became an authority on tax and fiscal policy and helped set up the tax system to fund Social Security. As U.S. secretary of the Treasury (under Truman), he helped establish the International Monetary Fund. He also served as a U.S. circuit court judge. In 1946, hoping to unite an unusually fractious and divided court, Truman named Vinson chief justice of the Supreme Court, a move that would have significant consequences for future civil rights decisions.

According to the Kentucky Encyclopedia: “. . .the Vinson court chipped away at state and federal statutes that were discriminatory and it laid the basis for overturning the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision for separate but equal facilities. Racial discrimination, Vinson said, had no place in public education. The case of Brown v. Board of Education (1954) appeared before his court, but the final decision was postponed, and Vinson did not live to see it. Justice Tom Clark, who served with Vinson on the Supreme Court, was convinced VInson would have voted to overturn the Plessy decision.”

Had he lived to do so, Vinson would have been the one to bring to life the opinion of fellow Centre alumnus John Marshall Harlan-1856 who so famously dissented to the original Plessy decision.

Kentucky counts four men among the 45 who have served as U.S. vice president. Two of the four are Centre alumni.

• John Cabell Breckinridge was just 17 when he graduated from Centre in 1838. He went on to become a lawyer, Kentucky state legislator, U.S. representative and U.S. senator, and vice president of the United States, all by the age of 45, having been elected on the Democratic ticket with James Buchanan in 1856. A champion of states’ rights and a charismatic leader with a charming personal manner, his only political defeat came when he lost the 1860 presidential race to Abraham Lincoln. During the Civil War, he served as a Confederate officer and, briefly, as Confederate secretary of war. (Breckinridge Hall is named for his uncle, Robert, a founder of Danville Theological Seminary, which built Breck.)

• Adlai E. Stevenson was a member of Centre’s Class of 1859 and married the daughter of a Centre president. The death of his father forced Stevenson to leave Centre without graduating. He became interested in politics after hearing the 1858 Lincoln-Douglas debates, served two terms in the U.S. House of Representatives, and later served as vice president during Grover Cleveland’s second term as president (1893-1897). His grandson and namesake was a two-time candidate for president in the 1950s.

• Richard Johnson, Kentucky’s first vice president, served under Martin Van Buren (1837-40) after three decades in the House and the Senate. A Kentucky native, Johnson is the only vice president to be selected by the Senate. (Under the Twelfth Amendment, the Senate chooses the vice president if a majority of the electoral votes is not received.)

• Alben Barkley, Kentucky’s most recent vice president, was elected with Harry Truman in 1948 at the age of 70. A native of Graves County, Ky., he served seven terms in the U.S. House of Representatives followed by many years in the U.S. Senate before his elevation to the vice presidency. It was his grandson who first used the term “veep” as an affectionate term for the vice president.

What is the connection between Centre's student center and hemp?

Centre’s student center was officially dedicated in 1994 as the Combs Center, but everyone on campus calls it the Warehouse. Built about 1902, it was used for many years by the George Cogar Hemp and Grain Company for storing and processing hemp, an important local crop. Boyle County farmers raised as much as 2.5 million pounds of hemp in the early part of the century when the fiber was used for making rope and twine.

The building remained in active commercial use for more than 90 years, mostly for storage, but also as an auction barn, a used-furniture store, and, briefly, a night club.

In 1992, Centre bought the building to turn into a student center and as a focal point for the new residential area of campus developing along West Walnut Street. The renovations preserved many of the original characteristics, including plank floors, brick walls, and one-foot square oak beams.

The official name honors Leslie Combs ’25, owner of the legendary horse farm Spendthrift.

Centre has a reputation for fundraising excellence. For much of the last two decades, it has held the record for percentage of alumni who make annual gifts. Its capital campaigns have been uncommonly successful. But the prize for most colorful of all CentreÕs fundraising efforts must surely go to the Say It With Cement campaign of 1923. The Praying Colonels, still reveling in their unexpected 6-0 victory over Harvard in 1921, were the hottest football team around. Twelve thousand fans turned out to watch CentreÕs 1922 game against the University of Kentucky. Encouraged, the College made plans for a 12,000-seat stadium with concrete stands to line either side of a new football field. The project required 18,000 barrels of cement, each costing $3.15, and bosters from across the stateÑand the nationÑwere encouraged to show their support with, yes, cement. The businessmen of Mayfield quickly donated a carload; Mount Sterling, Frankfort, Louisville, and other Kentucky cities vied to be the next to join in. New York cartoonist Rube Goldberg wired word of his contribution soon after the campaign began: "I have been saying it with cement for years through my characters. ThatÕs what their brains are made of. I am glad to donate ten barrels." And a biography of Boston arts patron Isabella Stewart Gardner included her response to CentreÕs request for funds: "It was the only appeal Mrs. Gardner ever called ÔdelightfulÕ; it was so much more entertaining than the flood of requests from colleges and universities to contribute toward endowments which would enable them to increase professorsÕ salaries, or build laboratories, or do other commonplace and obvious things." But CentreÕs era of football glory was even then beginning to fade. The College scaled down the stadium project. Today bleachers line only one side of the field. Yet the legacy of the Say It With Cement campaign remains. nineteen brass plaques still line the back row of the stands with the names of significant contributors, names such as Judge R.W. Bingham, Louis and William Seelbach, and the cities of Harrodsburg, Mayfield, Louisville, and Harlan.