May 19, 2000

I would echo Dr. Mannoia's thanks to all of you for joining us here for a few minutes this evening to celebrate this special occasion. One of the things I have most loved about Greenville College and the City of Greenville has been a sense of interconnectedness through time and space that is so apparent when we look closely at city and college history.

My grandmother attended college here in 1930 and '31, and my parents in the late 50's, so I feel like the college's history is in large part my own history. I want to describe just a little of that interconnectedness this evening.

Between 1825 and the mid-1850's a promising lawyer and probate judge by the name of John Brown White decided to leave the practice of law to embark on a new professional path - in education. In 1855 John Brown White and Stephen Morse founded a college in Greenville, Illinois, to be known as Almira College, named for Stephen Morse' wife Almira Ann Blanchard.

As we all know Almira College is now Greenville College; but what many may not know is that John Brown White was the great-grandfather of one of our guests and benefactors, Mr. C. Douglas Hoiles. The Hoiles family has been a dear friend to Greenville College ever since John Brown White served as the first president of Almira College.

In her 1942 memoir about the college, Still Abides the Memory, Mary Tenney offers these images to describe the setting for students returning to Greenville College in the late summer of 1908 (paraphrased): (and I would encourage you here to reflect on the images the writer creates) "….the most distinctive feature perhaps was the life of simple pleasures shared by the students: no radios, no commercialized amusements, few automobiles to disturb the placidity of rural life……….for this reason "the gullies" as they were (and are) colloquially known furnished the students some of the most unforgettable experiences, such as a stroll across the hills on a warm, Saturday afternoon in April, under the immaculate dogwood blossoms and rosy laciness of the redbud trees…….…. (later) the late fall arrived and the ridges became a mass of gold and crimson against a purple-blue Indian summer haze………..each season the gullies offered some new attraction and their idyllic beauty furnished the setting for most of the proposals of marriage made during those years…."

Now, as you summon those images to mind, realize the impact of those many marriages on our lives today. To a large degree, Greenville College history from the early 1900's is founded on the work of those young men and women who met and vowed marriage in the cool shade, or sheltering warmth, of these woods. Their love for the college is inexorably founded on the gift of natural beauty created by our Heavenly Father and provided to us by the hospitality of our benefactors, the Hoiles.

It cannot be overemphasized how important that gift has been to the college as it exists today - Greenville College, and its Hoiles Gardens, are a bright light drawing quality students and shaping their lives for a future of service and character. These gardens will color the fond memories of Greenville College students for the next 100 years just as they did for those students in 1908.

Today, by dedicating the gullies as the Hoiles Gardens, we offer our eternal thanks to Doug, Sue and Jeff for their many years of hospitality and hard work. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Hoiles Gardens.

David D. Patrick, Jr.,
May 19, 2000

John Brown White (1810-1887) m. 1st Mary Powers Merriam (1815-1855) in 1838 2nd Elizabeth Richardson Wright (1820-1910)

Juliette Powers White (1843-1924) m. Charles Douglas Hoiles (1844-1915)

In 1876 Guy Brown Hoiles (1877-1937) m. Alice Baumberger in 1899

Charles Douglas Hoiles Jr. (1910- ) m. Susan Lea Rosskopf (1911- )
Charles D. Hoiles III (1940- )
Jeffery Morse Hoiles (1942- )