I learned of Hesston’s search for a writer and part-time history teacher from my daughter Laura, a student at Hesston College in 2004. She reported to me in a phone conversation that she had had a long conversation with Dean Marc Yoder. After explaining why she had spent so much time in the dean’s office, she said my name had emerged as one who might answer Hesston’s search for a writer and teacher.

Later conversations with the dean and co-chair of the Centennial Steering Committee Elam Peachey sparked a serious interest. I would not leave my then-current post as director of the Mennonite Church USA Historical Committee and Archives easily. But I had thought I wanted to do more writing and to teach on the college level. Here was an opportunity to do both. Consequently, in summer 2005, I moved to Hesston, and Michele followed a month later.

The idea had emerged during the administration of Loren Swartzendruber, when he invited Joe Miller, who had written a series of articles for Hesston’s seventy-fifth anniversary, to dream about a centennial celebration. The planning begun then was placed on hold during the transitions in the president’s office, and then picked up when Howard Keim became president in 2005.

Writing the centennial history was as daunting as it was compelling. I had read Mary Miller’s Pillar of Cloud, the fifty-year history of the college when I was a student (1971-73), and then again when I was on staff (1973-75). I did not seriously imagine that I would be given the privilege of writing the centennial history.

I began exploring the archival collections in the basement of Mary Miller Library. The next summer I satisfied my curiosity by exploring the Pennsylvania origins of two of Hesston’s founders, T. M. Erb and A. L. Hess. I wanted to see the Weaverland and Florin farms they had left to move to Kansas. The fertile limestone soil and the substantial stone and brick farm buildings were impressive. What did they gain by leaving? Learning about the call to Kansas was an important part of the story. The loss of the ancestral farms in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, was tempered by the lure of more affordable prairie land in Kansas and opportunities to create a new spiritual and social environment. Pennsylvania Mennonites never produced a college, but Pennsylvanians who migrated to Kansas did so.

I wanted to recreate as much as possible the context of the school in the West. Thus the early chapters explore the First Americans and their displacement by European-Americans, the development of Kansas as a territory and as a state, and most important, the Mennonite church which endorsed and founded the college. 

I also wanted to give texture and flavor to the Hesston College story by using the diaries of the founders, the words and expressions of students, faculty, and staff. Enrollment and financial data reflect the opportunities and challenges of each decade. In doing so I risked both including too much data in some cases and omitting too much in other cases. 

While my limitations may be obvious, I hope what will emerge most clearly are the people who make this story, the men and women of foresight and fortitude, faith and imagination. Such people—students, faculty, staff, alumni, donors, and friends—will also lead the college into its second century.
—John E. Sharp
Hesston, Kansas