COLLEGE IS NOT THE ONLY
WAY TO GET AN EDUCATION
by Daniel Suits
East Lansing Town Courier, September 28, 2003

A reader was kind enough to phone the other day, and during the course of our conversation remarked that, judging by recent columns, I seemed to admire my father. I confess she is right. My father was unusual in a good many ways. Perhaps more than anything else, in his education. For broad general knowledge, he was better educated than most of the people I have known, including some of my academic colleagues.

When he retired after fifty-five years at work, he became the publisher of a magazine for amateur astronomers, he joined the American Rocket Society, and he served on the international board of Atlantic Union.

Dad was born in rural Illinois in 1888, the youngest of nine children. The family was poor, and as a very young boy Dad helped out by doing odd jobs and running errands for a neighbor at the magnificent compensation of a penny a day. He attended the little rural school and did very well, but at the end of the eighth grade, there was no question of going on to high school. He had to venture out to make his own living.

Dad got a job as messenger boy in a telegraph office near St. Louis, and one day, delivering a message to the Brown Shoe Company, his evident energy attracted the attention of the head of the firm who offered him a job on the spot. He was a bright and careful worker with plenty of nerve and initiative and quickly rose through the ranks of the firm. He eventually became manager of the company’s branch factory in Louisiana, Missouri.

There wasn’t much to do in the evening in a small town, so the high school commencement was a welcome diversion, and Dad attended. In those days, the commencement marked the end of formal education for almost all high school students. College was a rare privilege for the few who could afford not to work, and the speaker, Rabbi Leon Harrison from St. Louis, told the graduating

Dorothy Halyburton 1911 High School Graduation

students that, although they coudn’t go to college, they could still get a fine education by reading five books. He then named: "Wonders of the Heavens," a book on astronomy; "Primer of Geology;" "Prehistoric Man;" "History of European Morals;" and "Ten Great Religions." (The books are long out of print, and I have no record of the authors.)

Dad asked his married sister in St. Louis to send him copies of the books, and he read them carefully. They so impressed him that he decided to pursue his education more systematically. A young single man with a good salary and few expenses, he had saved two thousand dollars – a sizable sum in those days.

So he resigned his job, moved to St. Louis and began to spend his days in the reading room of the Cabanne branch of the St. Louis public library. He began by expanding on the topics of the five books, and broadened his study as he discovered new ideas and new subjects. He spent an entire year in the Cabanne reading room, and by the time he finally had to go back to work, Dad had got everything from his library study that could be expected from life at college. Including a wife. My mother was the librarian.