College celebrates 60th anniversary of Churchill's 'Iron Curtain' speech

~ The small college seeks a prestigious speaker to deliver the John Findley Green lecture.

FULTON, Mo. -- President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair sent their regrets, but Westminster College still planned to celebrate the 60th anniversary of Winston Churchill's famed "Iron Curtain" speech.

Officials at the small Missouri liberal arts college aimed high in their efforts to lure a marquee speaker to deliver the John Findley Green lecture this weekend.

Previous lecturers included former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who spoke on the 50th anniversary of Churchill's address; then-Vice President George H.W. Bush, who appeared a decade earlier; former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev in 1992; and former Polish president Lech Walesa in 1998.

Sufficient stature

Faced with finding a last-minute replacement for Bush and Blair, college leaders chose to postpone the lecture until a later date.

Rob Crouse, a school spokesman, said everybody that was involved wanted to have someone of sufficient stature and caliber.

The three-day celebration began Friday afternoon with a student forum featuring Lady Mary Soames, Churchill's sole surviving daughter. After an invitation-only premiere Friday night, the newly renovated Winston Churchill Memorial and Museum opens to the public Saturday morning.

Television commentator Chris Matthews will speak at a black-tie gala tonight in the historic gym where Churchill coined the term that would come to define the Soviet Union's post-World War II dominance across most of Eastern Europe.

And on Sunday, worshippers can attend services in the Church of St. Mary the Virgin, Aldermanbury, a centuries-old British building relocated to Fulton about 20 years after Churchill's speech.

Gone from the museum are many of the staid, musty artifacts from the past century.

Instead, visitors to the interactive exhibits will be able to view videos exploring Churchill's formative years, walk through a World War I trench, listen to debate in the British House of Commons and step into his footsteps as he encountered Hitler and the growing Nazi menace.

"It was basically one large room of artifacts," said Crouse, describing the museum before its $4 million renovation. "In terms of state-of-the-art technology, it rivals any of the museums in Washington, D.C."

'Churchill's Grudges'

Not everyone at the 900-student college was looking forward to the celebration.

The school's student newspaper recently published an opinion piece titled "Churchill's Grudges" by editor Chris Campbell, a senior. Campbell's column criticized school leaders for "riding Churchill's coattails."

"We've been doing this for 60 years and it's time to give it up," he told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch for a story in Friday's editions.

Such criticisms miss the point of honoring the late British leader, said Crouse, who cited a variation of a school slogan: "We're not about reliving history. We're about making history."

"It's not about reliving Churchill," he said. "It's about the students seeing Churchill as a model. ... He's just the foundation to build upon."