Rev. Daniel Hirschy ’41 was born in Berne, Indiana in 1918. He and his three older siblings grew up in Evans City, Pennsylvania, where Dan enjoyed playing football and basketball and running track and cross-country. He graduated from high school in 1936 and worked for a local farmer at $0.25 an hour to earn enough money to attend college. Dan’s parents, Pastor Norman and Esther Hirschy, were missionary-minded and ardent promoters of Bryan College. Through them and the evangelistic speakers who came to hold tent meetings in his home area, Dan was influenced toward foreign missionary service. He began his studies at Bryan College in 1937. Funds were limited during Dan’s college experience. He worked waiting tables at the college, helping in the print shop, and firing the furnace. When his only pair of well-worn pants needed repair, he took cover in the furnace room where he worked, and carefully handed them out to his sister, Joyce, who was also at Bryan, to be mended. Dan learned by experience that God provides for the needs of those who follow His leading. Over the course of his time at Bryan, Dan gained experience in Christian service by speaking at street meetings, holding services in country school houses, and preaching in chapels. He was a member of Bryan’s Foreign Missions Fellowship, from which students were called to serve the Lord in foreign missions. During the last two years at Bryan, Dan began dating Eleanor Timpano, the girl who became his wife of sixty years. He met her during tent meetings, and they corresponded during his time at Bryan and dated during his summers at home. Having no car, he hitch-hiked the fifteen miles to her home in Frisco, PA. They were married
there on September 8, 1941. Dan and Eleanor knew God had called them to serve in Africa. Following their marriage, they spent a year at Fort Wayne Bible College receiving training. For two years, they worked in a mill in Eleanor’s hometown. Dan did pulpit supply, and later they served together in mission work in Jenny’s Creek, WV. They were accepted for service in French Equatorial Africa (today the Chad Republic) in 1945, and following a year of deputation, they and their young daughter left New York City in May 1946. Dan and Eleanor actively served the Lord a total of thirty-nine years, which included seven terms in Koumra. Three more daughters were added to their family during this time. In the spring of 1973, Dan and Eleanor left all four girls in the States and returned to Africa for what would be their final term. Four years turned out to be only four months. Placed under house arrest, they were given twenty-four hours to pack for eviction from Chad. They were detained in Ft. Archambault and loaded at midnight onto a truck for a 400-mile trip over unpaved road to the capitol. There, they and several other missionaries were accused of being subversives. They were flown to Paris and then home. Later, they learned that some of the national church leaders had been arrested, and, refusing to go back to their old ways, were shot and buried in a mass grave. Following their return to the States, Dan and Eleanor accepted God’s call to work in Waterville, ME, where Dan and his two youngest daughters live now. Dan celebrated his 103rd birthday on April 21, 2021. He is currently the oldest living Bryan alumnus.
Karin (de Rosset) Traylor Bryan College ’64
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