History of Fort Hays State University

Excerpts from Lighthouse on the Plains by Dr. James Forsythe

Fort Hays State University is located at Hays, Ellis County, Kansas. It is approximately 250 miles west of Kansas City, Missouri, and 325 miles east of Denver, Colorado. It was the farthest west of any of the schools in the Central High Plains when it was founded. The university serves a vast area of western Kansas that is approximately 250 miles long and 225 miles deep. It also attracts students from contiguous counties in Nebraska, Colorado, and Oklahoma. The constituency that once was essentially agrarian has changed as the new economy of the world has changed. More non-traditional and international students attend, and thus there is more of a global view of the world on the campus.
The presidents of Fort Hays State have all been men of vision. That is not unusual, as most colleges and universities can evoke the same claim for their schools. However, the unusual circumstances of the founding of Fort Hays State and its location caused these men to have special kinds of dreams, special visions, about their special school. Principal William S. Picken wanted autonomy for his Normal School. He wanted it to be a college, and he wanted it to be of service to western Kansas.
President William Alexander Lewis was a man with a vision of the campus and the mission of the school. He led Fort Hays State from being a Normal School to being a liberal arts college.
The Great Depression and the Dust Bowl challenged President Clarence E. Rarick. Instead of fully pursuing his vision, it fell his lot to preserve the dreams and the visions of Picken and Lewis so that the lighthouse on the plains would survive.
War forced President Lyman Dwight Wooster, who wanted strong liberal arts and graduate programs, to make adjustments to accommodate the military. After the war, he had to struggle to find living accommodations for students and to find quality faculty to teach them.
The "Builder-president," Dr. Morton Christy "Pete" Cunningham, directed Fort Hays through the time of upward spiraling enrollments. He spent twenty years struggling to keep up with buildings and locating quality faculty.
President John W. Gustad piloted Fort Hays State through the traumatic years of Vietnam, student rebelliousness, and social unrest. The many changes that he brought about were the final steps in preparation for university status.
Dr. Gerald W. Tomanek had a dream that his college would become a university, and the dream became reality in April 1977. He also dreamed of better classrooms. Budgets were a challenge, but he laid the foundation upon which to build for using computers in the classroom and for research.
Dr. Edward H. Hammond brought a vision of the campus and where the campus should be going. His vision of "high tech-high touch" was carried across the state, and the university became known for the vision and what has been accomplished.
Dedicated faculty, service to western Kansas, the presence of an agrarian value system, the Christian heritage, loyalty to the region, dedication carried to the extreme of sacrifice, the aspirations of starry-eyed farm youths, patriotism, and, of course, rugged individualism, these were some of the underlying themes that I found. Overriding these themes and perhaps equal with the theme of a special destiny is the pioneering spirit. General Philip Sheridan thought that it was impossible for anyone to live in the area that is now served by Fort Hays State. Those who came to settle were beset by many tribulations, and Fort Hays faced the same tribulations—"floods, drought, dust storms, crop failures, depression, loss of crops, and war." These misfortunes sometimes halted temporarily the progress of the school, delayed the vision. World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Persian Gulf War, action in Kosovo, and the horrible attack on the World Trade Center in New York City on September 11, 2001 represent global issues that have impacted the university and still impact it. In some ways, perhaps in many ways, each of these events changed the campus.
As Wooster wrote, when events like this happened, "there were always leaders with courage and hope to point the way. 'Dust or no dust, we sing,' was a slogan used in one of the musical festivals in the so-called 'Dirty Thirties."' This was the pioneering spirit, and after the attack on the World Trade Center, that spirit was joined with patriotism and the belief in America to create a new spirit in the Centennial year.
But deep down at the local level on campus, it was the pioneering spirit that permitted the dreams of the visionary leaders to come true. The rains followed the dust storms, the prairies turned green in spring and the wheat golden in June, and the farms of western Kansas were alive. The farm families scratch their livelihood from the prairies of the High Plains, and they have vision. And when the fall semester arrives each year, these farm families in western Kansas, many of them descendants of pioneers on the Kansas frontier, believe that dreams can still come true. Their young sons and daughters are sent off to college in the belief that through education their children might have fuller, more rewarding lives. Many of these young people become students at Fort Hays State. To them, the past is prologue. For the rest of us, it is history-the history of Fort Hays State University.

James L. Forsythe
Hays, Kansas
December 2001