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This is Cotner college—Cotner boulevard between Aylsworth and
Colby—back, back in the early days of existence. The grass around it
appears to be unbroken prairie growth. There are no walks around the
building, not even paths. And yet this is very much a picture of Cotner
now. After 1889, when the college opened, a tide of green washed up over
the campus—a whole grove at the north and big sheltering trees
elsewhere. And so also did a tide of youth sweep into the building to
give it life. Now both tides have receded. And still, Cotner does not
represent a totally lost cause. Young people who wish to attend a
denominational college have merely been deflected to other Christian
church institutions—Drake, in Iowa, for instance, nearest Nebraska.
A small church college is one of those anomalous places where students
in the morning gaze worshipfully upon a preacher professor and in the
evening plot to put his cow up in the belfry tower. Scattered over the
world as teachers, preachers and missionaries, Cotner students recall
happy days here, not only inspirational but full of pranks and fun. The
college was named for Samuel Cotner, who donated a large tract of land
in Bethany to the school. Closely connected with the school is the name
of W. P. Aylsworth, first chancellor and later president emeritus,
greatly loved and revered by the procession of students who passed thru
the college during his lifetime. He was killed a number of years ago, as
twilight was approaching—on Cotner boulevard, named for the college, and
near the street named for him—by a speeding driver who did not stop and
was never located.