Smith, Tilman R. (1903-2000)

Mennonite Weekly Review obituary: 2000 Sep 14 p. 1

Birth date: 1903

text of obituary:

Former Hesston College president dies

By Laurie L. Oswald
Mennonite Weekly Review

GOSHEN, Ind. - Tilman R. Smith, a former president of Hesston (Kan.) College, couldn’t go far from his room before he died at age 97. But that didn't stop his soul from traveling the world.

Avid reading, a connection to the wider Mennonite church and a love for people took him far beyond his home at Greencroft Health Care Center, where he died Aug. 31.

In his last years, he was what he had been all his life — a man who lived fully and inspired others, friends and family said.

He read widely, laughed heartily, cared deeply and committed passionately to the church, they said. Until his last days, he subscribed to 15 periodicals, held lively conversations and kept track of family news.

"He kept up with all the church papers, the local papers, the college papers," said John Smith, one of Smith’s six children and a professor of education at Goshen College.

“He was very aware. He wasn't frozen in time and space. Whenever you went into his room, he could talk with you about everything going on around the world and in the church."

“He taught me what it means to be interested in the world outside myself, the world beyond me."

Smith, Hesston's president from 1959 to 1968, was a public school principal and superintendent in Illinois in the 1930s through the ’50s.

He worked as part-time director of Studies and Programs for the Aging for the Mennonite Church in the 1970s and '80s. He wrote his memoirs at age 93.

Smith’s keen mind, caring and sense of humor inspired Loren Swartzendruber, current Hesston president.

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Mennonite Weekly Review obituary: 2000 Sep 14 p. 2

Smith passed on his wisdom

Smith, who was Swartzendruber's friend and mentor, came to Swartzendruber’s inauguration in 1994. Smith was the college's fourth president, and Swartzendruber is its seventh.

“When I traveled to Goshen, I used to go to visit him whenever I could," Swartzendruber said. “He was an incredible conversationalist and had a great memory.

“On one of my visits, as soon as I walked into the door, he said, ‘I have an idea. I know what we should do.' Thirty years after his presidency, he was thinking in terms of we, not you. He stayed connected. He really cared."

His caring reached a wide circle of family and friends.

“He knew so many people, knew how they were related, what they did, who their children were," Swartzendruber said. “He always wanted to know how you were doing, what you were doing."

Smith's sense of humor modeled for Swartzendruber how to keep perspective in a college presidency.

“He underscored for me that a sense of humor is essential, both for fulfilling a role and in growing older," Swartzendruber said.

“He embodied for me what it means to do a job seriously, but not to take yourself too seriously while you’re doing it."

Smith left an unusual presidential legacy. The Mennonite Church sought him when it needed a college president and a public school administrator to help the institution through a transition.

Hesston Academy, a boarding high school on the campus since the college began in 1909, became an accredited public high school during Smith’s first years at the college. The public high school moved off campus into its own facilities in 1964.

“Hesston College needed both a college president and a public school principal, so the Academy could become accreditated [sic] by the state," Swartzendruber said.

Prior to his coming to Hesston, the Mennonite Church had discussed whether the school should become a four-year college, Swartzendruber said.

Smith envisioned creating the best two-year college in the country, rather than becoming another four-year MC college that would have competed with Goshen and Eastern Mennonite University in Harrisonburg, Va.

Smith came to Kansas from the Eureka, Ill., area, near to where he grew up on a farm. He was born to John J. and Catherine (Katie) Smith on New Year’s Day, 1903.

He graduated from Hesston Academy and Goshen College and earned advanced degrees at the Universities of Iowa and Illinois.

He met Louella Schertz at Goshen College. They married on Christmas Eve, 1932. She preceded him in death July 22, 1998.

They settled in Roanoke, Ill., where for 16 years he served as a teacher and then principal of the high school. In 1949, he became superintendent of a newly-formed school district in Eureka. He organized and directed five schools in three small towns.

He retired from full-time work at 65, when he left Hesston College in 1968. In the early 1970s, the Mennonite Church hired him part time to work on issues of aging. He gave retreats, seminars and church talks and wrote a book, In Favor of Growing Older (Herald Press, 1981).

Willard Krabill, a retired Mennonite physician from Goshen, first learned to know Smith in 1973, when they worked together on a health and welfare committee of Mennonite Board of Missions.

“He didn’t get a degree in it [studies on aging ], but he read so widely, that he became an expert and was in demand," Krabill said.

The White House invited him to a conference on aging. And the Indiana Association of Homes for the Aging cited him for his work.

Survivors include three daughters, Carolyn Diener of Louisville, Ky., Marian Yoder of Gilroy, Calif., and Eleanor A. Smith of Decatur, Ga.; two sons, John Jay of Goshen, and Stanley K. of Gainesville, Fla; 10 grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren.

     Tilman Smith on Aug. 12 with his four great-grandchildren: 
     Jacob Yoder Schrock, Magdalena Dutchersmith, Jordan Miller and Colin Miller

He was also preceded in death by an infant daughter, Janice.

Services were held at College Mennonite Church in Goshen. Burial was in Violett Cemetery.

Memorials have been established with the Tilman and Louella Smith Scholarship Fund and the Hesston College Library Building Fund.