100 Years Ago: 1925 Monticello Seminary Graduation Celebrates Grads From Around the World in Godfrey

GODFREY - Commencement Week at Monticello Seminary (now the campus of Lewis and Clark Community College) began on Saturday, June 6, 1925, with the Class Day program at 4 p.m. Students performed the commencement play, “The Piper,” written by playwright and poet Josephine Preston Peabody, at 8 p.m. under the oaks on the north campus. Consuelo Alarca of Havana, Cuba (whose mother also graduated from the Seminary) played the lead role. Bishop Francis J. McConnell of the Methodist Church preached the Baccalaureate sermon on Sunday, June 7, in Reid Memorial Chapel, and Monticello alumni gathered for class reunions on Monday, June 8, on the east campus grounds.

The commencement exercises were held on Tuesday, June 9, in Reid Memorial Chapel. Senator William B. McKinley gave the commencement address, titled “America and Europe.” Senator McKinley, who had recently returned from Europe, “gave a brief picture of economic conditions as he found them in England and Continental countries and declared that the disposition of the people over there is that ‘they want no more wars.’” (Senator McKinley died December 7, 1926, and therefore did not live to see World War II.) In addition to his career in politics, William Brown McKinley was chief executive of the Illinois Traction System interurban electric railway. The McKinley Bridge between Venice, Ill., and St. Louis, Mo., is named after him. The musical numbers of the commencement program were given by violinist Jacques Gordon, concertmeister of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Monticello Seminary principal Harriet Rice Congdon conferred diplomas on the 31 graduates representing eight states and Cuba. At the conclusion of the commencement exercises, a moving picture taken at the 1924 commencement was shown in the recreation hall.

Families, alumni, and members of the community were invited to all Commencement Week events.

The Monticello Seminary 1925 graduates were: Consuelo Maria Alarco, Marta Chambers, Marian Jewell Chastain, Jeannette Clark, Margaret Goetchious Copley, Martha Ann Coudy, Jane Catherine Gardner, Wealtha Harding, Helen Allen Harper, Helen Frances Heller, Jayne Carolyn Hutton, Marion Joy, Helen Gertrude Kelley, Mary LeNoir Kenney, Mary Janet Koeppen, Alice Maxine McElrath, Helen Moulton, Lillian Frances Naylor, Margaret Elizabeth O’Donnell, Catherine Elizabeth Parks, Barbara Pope, Jean Margaret Rathbun, Lorraine King Schafer, Mary Elieanor Scroggs, Betty Stevenson, Jean Stevenson, Dorothy Ann Whitelaw, Ann Amelia Whitney, Charlotte Brooks Willson, Margaret G. Wright, and Melba Elizabeth Wyckoff.

The president of the graduating class of 1925 was Ann Amelia Whitney. Ann Whitney went on to marry Spencer T. Olin Sr., and in the early 1960s, they donated $2 million for the construction of Hatheway Hall, now Hatheway Cultural Center, which was the largest such gift to a junior college in America. Hatheway is named after Ann Olin’s mother, Norah Dell Hatheway Whitney, of the Monticello College class of 1889. (A side note: Ann Whitney Olin was also a trustee of The Hayner Public Library District in the 1940s and 1950s.)

Special thanks to George Fuller for research help with this week’s article and to Liz Burns and Greg Cash, Lewis and Clark Community College librarians, for your enthusiastic assistance with this article and every research question I’ve asked you in the past!

Sources

“$70,000 Pledged to Endowment of Monticello.” Alton Evening Telegraph (Alton, IL), June 9, 1925.

“After 25 Years, Hatheway is Community Institution.” Alton Evening Telegraph (Alton, IL), December 20, 1986.

Lewis and Clark Community College. 2025. “Hatheway Cultural Center.” https://www.lc.edu/community-visitors/campus-attractions/hatheway-cultural-center.html

Monticello College. 1960. “The Echo.” https://archive.org/details/monticello-echo-1960

“Monticello Will Graduate 31 in Class of 1925.” Alton Evening Telegraph (Alton, IL), June 1, 1925.

United States Congress. 1927. William B. McKinley. Memorial Addresses Delivered in the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States in Memory of William B. McKinley, Late a Senator from Illinois. Sixty-Ninth Congress. Proceedings in the Senate. February 27, 1927.Proceedings in the House. February 6, 1927. Washington: U.S. Govt. Print. Off. https://archive.org/details/williambmckinley00unit

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