The Legacy of Loren Reid ’27

It was 87 years ago that Grinnell’s oldest living alumnus graduated from the College. Loren Reid ’27, who turned 109 in August, came to Grinnell in the fall of 1923. It was here that he met his wife and decided he would devote himself to the field of speech. Reid has left a legacy in his work, his family, and his support of the College. Had it not been for a flat tire, though, his life would likely look very different.

Loren Reid didn’t arrive at Grinnell with the hopes of attaining a liberal arts education. When visiting colleges with his father, he was far more enamored of the University of Iowa. He refused to visit Grinnell’s campus on the trip from Osceola, Iowa, to Iowa City or on the way back. It was thanks to a punctured tire that he even bothered to stop in the town. As he said in Finally it’s Friday: School & Work in Mid-America, 1921–1933:

“In anybody’s book, Grinnell College is a highly regarded institution. It is famous for distinguished teaching. Its students have done well in graduate and professional universities. I am proud to be an alumnus. I entered Grinnell, however, not for any of the foregoing reasons, but because Somebody Up There caused the Overland to have two blowouts, until we finally got the message. …”

Before he left, Reid had secured the last scholarship Grinnell had to offer that year. Reid, who had worked

in his father’s newspaper, the Gilman City (Mo.) Guide, got a job at The Herald in Grinnell, where he worked from

5 p.m., when his classes ended, until 10 p.m. He recounts his early years operating the Linotype machine at his father’s office in his first autobiographical novel, Hurry Home Wednesday.

J.P. Ryan, professor of speech, was the Grinnell professor who had perhaps the most profound effect on Reid. In Finally it’s Friday, Reid wrote, “Some students, especially those who went on to graduate and professional schools, said later that Ryan had taught them the basic principles of examination writing. Others went so far as to allege that Ryan had taught them to think.” Reid recalled Ryan’s natural charisma as well as his devotion to his students and to his subject:

“Ryan was a dedicated believer in the necessity of public speaking in business, professional, and public life. ‘Public speaking is the most important study in the curriculum,’ he assured and reassured us. The way to learn to speak well is to make numerous short speeches. ‘Newton, Iowa, is the home of the One-Minute washing machine. Grinnell is the home of the one-minute speech.’ Even a brief speech, however, should have a useful purpose. A speaker should not merely scatter ‘beautiful sunshine,’ which we quickly saw was his term for B.S. To be able to present a message in a short time called for organization.”

In his book Reflections, Reflections, Reflections …, Reid gives Ryan an ample amount of credit for helping him get his academic career started. “Ryan’s advice was pointed and colorful: ‘If you want to teach, you must get a doctoral degree or you will be like the foolish virgins who showed up at the wedding feast without any oil in their lanterns.’” Ryan was also a major influence in Reid’s decision to enter the emerging field of speech rather than English.

More than even the influence of the legendary J.P. Ryan, the one event that shaped Reid’s life most at Grinnell was meeting his future wife, Augusta “Gus” Towner ’28. As he recalled, they met in a class they both disliked. For three years after Reid graduated, he and Gus lived in different cities and corresponded by mail. In the summer of 1930, they were both in Iowa City at Reid’s master’s degree commencement. Towner had just finished her second year of teaching English. Reid had said that he wanted to have his Ph.D. in hand, a good job, and a thousand dollars in the bank before the two of them got married. Even though at the time he had only his master’s and $320.58, and the job market was tightening, he and Towner married that August.

Reid received one of the first doctorates in speech from the University of Iowa and was instrumental in the early growth of the Speech Association of Missouri, which was formed in 1932. During World War II, Reid drew from the speeches of world leaders — Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt. He considered Roosevelt the most eloquent presidential orator since Lincoln.

After struggling to get by during the Great Depression and facing low enrollment and budget cuts during the war, colleges and universities found themselves after World War II with more students than they could accommodate. Reid found those years to be the “golden age of teaching.” With the enactment of the GI Bill in 1944 and the end of the war the following year, colleges and universities across the country were flooded with students. In the three years after World War II ended, enrollment doubled what it had been at its former peak. Half of the new enrollees were veterans. “I have yet to find a professor who does not recall the late 1940s and early 1950s as the peak years of teaching. We worked hard but the rewards were bountiful,” Reid wrote in Speech Teacher: A Random Narrative.

From 1946 to 1977, Gus Reid was a professor at the University of Missouri in Columbia, teaching English and rhetoric. The couple raised four children, the oldest of whom is now 80. It wasn’t until he retired that Reid started writing his autobiographical books, beginning with Hurry Home Wednesday. His favorite book that he wrote is Professor on the Loose, which documents his teaching and travels during the Great Depression, World War II, and the Cold War.

Three of the four Reid children and two of the couple’s 15 grandchildren attended Grinnell College. Ellen Reid Gold ’55, Stephen Reid ’62, and Tony Reid ’67 all became educators at either the high school or college level. “For us, choosing a life centered on reading, communication of ideas, and collaborative and academic engagement was as natural as breathing,” says Stephen Reid. Grinnell, he says, modeled the academic habits of inquiry, research, and engaged classroom teaching in him and his siblings. Tony Reid puts the life of his father, a man born in 1905, into a historical context: “He knew many men who fought in the Civil War; he recalls men who came to this country on sailing ships. He heard William Jennings Bryan speak. Loren actually has memories of when the Titanic sank, when he was seven.”

Gus Reid died in August 2009 at the age of 102. “Loren was really in love with Gus and remained so till the end of her life,” Ellen Gold says. In reflecting on his father’s legacy, Stephen Reid says, “Certainly his love of teaching and learning — which included traveling — was his most important legacy.” Regarding the whole family: “I think the most remarkable thing about the family was their connection to Grinnell and their subsequent desire to pursue careers in education. All four of the siblings earned Ph.D.s in various fields, from speech and English to education.”

Loren Reid’s life is one devoted to education — his own, his family’s and his students’. His family is “amazed and gratified” that he has lived so long, says Tony Reid. He lived in his own home until he was 107, water-skied into his 90s, and has voted in every presidential election since 1928. Reid had the makings of a Grinnellian before he ever came to Grinnell and established a distinctly Grinnellian legacy — one that values knowledge, inquiry, and exploration — that has already lasted decades and generations.