“Money is like manure; it’s not worth a thing unless it’s spread around encouraging young things to grow.”

—From The Matchmaker by Thornton Wilder

In 1917, a young Thornton Wilder wrote to Berea president William Goodell Frost from Oberlin College in Ohio. Wilder’s father had arranged for him to spend the summer working at Berea, and in the letter Wilder expressed hope that “my comparative lack of experience will give the minimum of trouble.”

Wilder had finished two years at Oberlin and would transfer to Yale the following year. During his summer in Berea, he worked on the College farm, since his father wanted him to sweat through some real labor, and took a course in stenography, making him an official Berea alumnus.

Following Wilder’s brief time in Berea, he enjoyed a long association with the College, even as he became an acclaimed novelist, playwright, and Pulitzer Prize winner for The Bridge of San Luis Rey and Our Town. He kept in touch with the family of William J. Hutchins, a former Oberlin professor who served as Berea’s president from 1920 to 1939, and Hutchins’ son, Francis S. Hutchins, who succeeded his father and served as Berea president from 1939 to 1967. Wilder visited campus from time to time and spoke at Berea’s Centennial Spring Convocation in 1955. During his lifetime, he was a periodic donor to Berea College, and, following his death in 1975, the College received one-third of his residual estate after bequests.

In addition to Wilder, the roster of historic figures who have given to Berea College includes:

• Andrew Carnegie
• Gilbert Colgate
• A.B. Dick
• J. Malcolm Forbes
• Henry Ford
• Katharine Hepburn
• Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes
• Julia Ward Howe
• J.C. Penney
• John D. Rockefeller
• Theodore Roosevelt
• William Howard Taft
• Doris Ulmann
• Mrs. Montgomery Ward
• Woodrow Wilson
• Orville Wright

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