#44: New grounds (1926)
"With the breath of spring, work for promotion such as mine
inevitably slackened in momentum and I heard the echoes
calling from our Anatolia campus, so in March I went overseas
again by the route we came ordinarily to prefer, via London,
Paris, Geneva, and the Simplon Orient Express to Thessaloniki.
College and Girls' School had been going very well in view of
the actual facts and general conditions. Even yet, refugee
multitudes by the thousand were expected to reach Macedonia,
chiefly from up-country Balkan states and provinces, but
this now was a fairly normal "exchange", with inevitable
hardships kept to a minimum.
................................................................
There had been increasing doubts in regard to the Kara Tepe
ridge where for more than two years we had anticipated
permanently rebuilding the College. There certainly were
difficulties. It was remote from town for day pupils. The
soil was thin and stony, and it would be difficult for
trees and vegetation to take root and grow. There was no
water near. No work had been done on the site except some
preliminary surveying. On April 14th, as Mr. Brewster and I
were walking from the Kara Tepe locality down to the city,
our attention was attracted to the lay of the land on our
present campus, along the edge of which we were passing,
by the old British military road. We turned aside, walked
carefully over the ground, considering the requirements of
our eagerly sought campus, with transportation, water supply
which was lacking and difficult outside of town, and the
like, and felt our quest was ending. Others soon agreed,
and from that time there was in general increasing approval
and satisfaction with what our Trustee, President Thwing,
when visiting us soon afterward, called "one of the finest
locations for a college in the whole world". The plan was
formed in May, 1926.
Having selected grounds for our main and permanent campus,
the next thing was to acquire the property. Within what
soon became and still is the main campus, there were five
small, unfenced fields. Cotton with a red boll grew in one.
There were some peas in another. Most of the ground was
rather thorny and stony. We employed Mr. John Racopoulos
as our agent, and I kept out of sight. One or two of the
pieces were inheritances and owned by family groups of a
score or more persons, any one of whom might forbid or
delay the sale, for the sake of the few drachmae belonging
to his small share. The middle piece of the five belonged
to the Kapoujides Church, probably having been left as a
bequest by someone who thought it might be well for him
to insure prayers for the rest of his soul when he was
done with this world. I asked the attorney who was passing
on titles for us about purchasing the piece. He said, "You
can't get it. This belongs to a Greek Orthodox Church. You
are foreigners and Protestants". I asked him if he could
not find some way to act as our agent and secure it, and
he emphatically declined to undertake it, saying, finally,
that if I could get the authority of the Metropolitan
Bishop, we might acquire it, but he evidently felt that
our chance was slim. Of course, I had to make the effort,
and I was fortunate enough to secure the full permission of
His Holiness for one of the little fields that we wanted.
That was near the beginning of an acquaintance between
us which grew and ripened with the years and resulting
relations of mutual friendship and respect between
Christian brethren. Through our Metropolitan Bishop,
I learned to regard the great Eastern Orthodox Churches
with great and increasing respect and good will."
NEXT: The first graduation
(1926)
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