Sounds of Monmouth

One of the featured events at Monmouth College's 2008 Alumni Weekend is the presentation of an audiotape of campus sounds made by John Niblock '58 and Charles Courtney '57 when they were students. Among the moments captured on tape are President Robert Gibson giving a Vespers prayer, "Dean Jean" Liedman announcing a faculty vote allowing coeds to stay out until midnight for formals, the whistle on the steamplant announcing a sports victory and Joe Tait '59, now a broadcaster for the NBA's Cleveland Cavaliers, doing the play-by-play for the Monmouth-Knox basketball game.

Had similar tapes been made in the ensuing decades, here are some of the sounds of Monmouth College that might have made their way onto them:

1960s

• The last-ever daily chapel service
• A war protest rally
• Visiting Japanese students from Tokyo's Tamagawa Gakuen University, speaking in their native tongue
• A young Bill Urban, who is still on the faculty today, giving a history lecture

1970s

• Basketball coach Terry Glasgow on the sidelines at a heated Monmouth-Knox game
• The Sig Ep Marching Kazoo Band playing during a Homecoming parade
• The Sound of Five performing one of its earliest concerts
• Ronald Reagan's visit to campus during the 1976 presidential primaries

1980s

• President Bruce Haywood announcing Walter Huff's $5 million gift to a large crowd of students
• Radio broadcasters Dan Nolan and Jim Lee calling a football game during the famed 1987-89 era
• A tune from the carillon atop Wallace Hall
• The first M Club Hall of Fame ceremony in 1984
   

1990s

• A performance by the Monmouth Chorale
• An invocation prayer by new college chaplain Kathleen Fannin
• Soap opera star Helen Wagner Willey '38 performing in “The Lion In Winter”
• The first Whiteman Lecture, given by Caterpillar CEO Lee Morgan

2000s

• Former president George Bush delivering the 2000 commencement address
• Gracie Peterson '22 performing at the Orpheum Theatre at her 100th birthday concert
• A broadcast of the college news on MC-TV
• A jackhammer, representing the large-scale construction and renovations on campus