THE PEOPLE who came to this place

From The First Class

ALUM WAYNE WALTHER

By Keisha T. Dyson

Reflections Of A First Son

You were in high school when your father became president of the Lutheran Schol of Theology at Chicago. What was your experience moving to Hyde Park?

My family moved to Chicago in 1964 because my father had been named the president of LSTC, which was in the process of being formed out of its five predecessor seminaries. At that time, I was a high school student, and we lived in Hyde Park, near the Illinois Central tracks down on 59th Street.

I saw the apartment buildings that were being demolished and had a view of the seminary being built from the ground up. In fact, my father sent me out one day to pull nails from the old buildings, and he sent those bent, rusty nails around to all the contributing congregations and synods.

Some people in the community were unhappy about the building of the seminary because it involved the destruction of housing. Students organized petition drives. I remember a student stopping me on 57th Street and saying, “You’ve got to sign our petition.” I said,

“I’m sorry, but I don’t think that would be a good idea.” I didn’t want to face my father’s anger! So I never signed a petition to protest the destruction of housing in Hyde Park.

What was your father’s vision for the seminary?

My father was hired to merge four smaller, mostly rural seminaries into a new seminary in Chicago. He was committed to encouraging a more urban focus in Lutheranism.

He saw this very much as an experiment, and that’s also a reason for the architecture.

I once saw drawings for the seminary—a standard collegiate Gothic design like many universities have. He rejected that traditional look. He wanted the seminary to be open to the city and the community. It’s why all the first-floor walls are glass—to make it look urban and new.

During the 1950s and 1960s, he regularly flew across the Atlantic for various ecumenical meetings, specifically to encourage theological education and refugee resettlement. He was very interested, for example, in the way Latin America was developing and even wanted to write a book about it but had time only to write a long article about his hopes for Lutheran engagement with Latin America.

Around the time the building was being constructed, there was an effort by Martin Luther King Jr. to bring justice to Selma, Ala. My father was invited, and he went down with other white clerics. Selma was a life-changing moment for him. He became acquainted with King and invited him to speak at the 1968 graduation of LSTC. King accepted, but unfortunately we all know what happened a few months before he could speak at LSTC.

What was your experience as a student at LSTC?

I started LSTC in the fall of 1978. My father retired in 1971, but most of the faculty he recruited were still there. I had little trouble fitting in. The 1970s were a time of ferment. I was very much an activist and thought the seminary should be directly engaged in activism too. I promptly got myself arrested at an anti-nuclear protest in Zion, Ill. President

Lesher took it with a grain of salt. He was glad to see student activism.

Roger Willer, now with the ELCA churchwide office, and I organized a movement to get LSTC out of its current banking arrangements with Continental Illinois Bank because they were invested in South Africa. We thought it would be much better if LSTC invested with a local bank, so with the help of faculty and other students, we persuaded the seminary to move its accounts to South Shore bank. It was a pretty exciting time.

Icame to Chicago in August of 1967 to start seminary in the first class to matriculate at 1100 E. 55th Street. It was an exciting time to be in seminary, an exciting time to be in Chicago, [and] an exciting time to be at LSTC.

We were in the midst of giants but didn’t know it. [Estonian theologian and church historian] Arthur Võõbus, [American Lutheran theologian and minister] Carl Braaten, [theologian and scholar] Wesley Fuerst, [Professor of Homiletics] Morris Niedenthal, [and the Rev. Dr.] Robert Tobias all opened the world of public theology to us in refreshing and challenging ways.

It was also the first meeting of students from the different traditions. This was my first experience of multiethnic Lutheranism, since I came from Texas with a pretty insular Germanic church (only later did I learn of the Texas Scandinavian traditions).

Do you have any words of inspiration for LSTC as it moves into its next location?

One reason I’m still Lutheran is that it is a very solidly grounded Christian denomination. It doesn’t change very fast, in ways that maybe it should, but it’s affirming of people, and it’s adaptive. LSTC is at the forefront of adaptation, and that’s a different and very vulnerable place to be, so the seminary has my support and will continue to have my support. I wish it the best in its new surroundings and with whatever new challenges and opportunities arrive in the future.

I gravitated toward the group (mostly from Maywood) who drank from the well of liturgical renewal, led by John Arthur (against his normal type) and Joel Albee from the Library. And since this was a time of student empowerment, we were given rein to experiment liturgically. Daily Eucharist became the norm and fed us during some anxious days, from Vietnam protest to early social consciousness.

1967 was a tremendous growing year. 1968 was of course a pivotal year, for LSTC and the whole country. I was always happy to have been there at the beginning.