The top floor of the mill is the weaving studio. Hand weaving is a craft almost as old as man himself. It flourished in the Ozarks in the 1930s when the W.P.A. put looms in hundreds of schools and communities. The College was one of those places. Here students work off part of their tuition by creating placemats, table runners, rugs, stoles and an assortment of other items. The looms are old but carefully cared for.
Down the road a piece is the agriculture department which houses one of the worlds best orchid collections. In passing through we met David Barker, the landscaping superintendent. We chatted for the next half an hour while he explained that he had 72 students working for him and was responsible for the landscape design and implementation for the entire campus. The orchids, now numbering over 7000 plants are available to the public.
We then worked ourselves across the campus. We stopped one of the students passing by and asked for a picture of his "Hard Work U" t-shirt. Billy Hall said he was a freshman and majoring in the restaurants/hotel industry. Again that warm satisfied feeling was projected as he talked about the college and his part in it. We would experience this same satisfied self-confident projection as we met more and more students.
We located our next stop in the back of one of the music buildings where (Yum-yum) the fruit cake factory was in full swing. As we munched the best of the samples, we chatted with Mynette Ulrich, Supervisor of the Order Department. She explained that the cost of operating the College was over a million dollars a month and by no means could the students hope to create that kind of income from the 15 hours a week they donate to the various efforts afforded them. Most of the income comes from private donations. We wandered back into the kitchen and sat with a handful of gals and guys who were packing fruit cakes and just having a ball interacting with each other.
Our final stop was at the nationally acclaimed Ralph Foster Museum, maintained on campus. Ralph Foster was a pioneer radio operator, who owned KWTO out of Springfield MO. He created the Ozark Jubilee which featured many of the old time country music names. He was an avid collector and supporter of the College, turning his collections over to the school for display. The museum is a cross section of the Ozark community. With such diversities as the old "Beverly Hillbillies" truck, display not far from an extensive collection of Rose O'Neill's famous "Kewpie" dolls. Fine hand carved oak furniture sits not far from displays of the radio days of KWTO and the great stars that performed there. The second floor contains one of the finest gun collections in the nation. The third floor holds the exquisite collections of birds and animals. If you ever need to identify a bird just drop by the third floor. You'll probably find it there. All in all, it was a lot of fun wandering around with the students watching the world of academia at work, and work really well!.

*** THE END ***

Back      <<<<< Back       HOME PAGE