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Collection: Directories and Documents > Historical Clippings
Historical Clippings Book (HC-22) (197 pages)
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Page: of 197
BELOVED TEACHER 103
Indiana?’’ he suggested. ‘‘There you will find the president, an old
student of mine, David Starr Jordan, one of the leading scientific men
of the country, possessed of the most charming power of literary expression, with remarkable ability in organization, and blessed with good
sense. Call him.’’
Going to Bloomington, seat of the University of Indiana, the
Stanfords met Dr. Jordan and without hesitation asked him to become
the president of Leland Stanford Junior University. He accepted
almost as promptly ; and at the age of 40, having already accomplished
as much as most men accomplish in a full lifetime, this remarkable man
started out on a new and even bigger career.
The next forty years were filled with the same intense activity
that occupied the first half of his lifetime. Leland Stanford Junior
University opened its doors on October 1, 1891. From that moment
Dr. Jordan was busy with a hundred different things. He carried on
his work as president, and he taught classes. He found time to complete a series of fish surveys for the government, a work begun in 1880.
He made many long journeys to various parts of the globe. He wrote
many books and articles on various subjects—six thousand during fifty
years according to a list made by one of his students.
In addition to his labors he delighted in doing such odd and
warmly human things as playing baseball on the faculty baseball team,
and writing stories and poems for his wife and children.
Twice the university was threatened with disaster, and on each
oeeasion Dr. Jordan’s courage and good management brought it
through unharmed. The first oceasion was the death of Senator Stanford in 1893, which brought about a lawsuit over the great fortune he
had left the university. The second was the great earthquake of 1906,
which destroyed $2,500,000 worth of property on the campus.
When death came to him in 1931, in his eighty-first year, he had
lived a full life indeed. He had come to love California, his adopted
state; and California had come to love him with equal affection. He
wanted to be known as a scientist. But he was more than that. For
his character, with its warmth, its generosity, its love of fair play, its
never failing sense of humor, its courage and frankness, was an inspiration to all who knew him. At seventeen it was his physical strength
that earned him a job as a teacher. At eighty it was his strength of
character that made him still a teacher, a teacher beloved by all. And
the career begun under odd cireumstances in that little country school
near Gainesville, New York, will continue to oceupy a high place in
the story of the men who built the state.