LETTERS: VERNON CHAPMAN WAS LEARNED MAN

To the editor:

Readers of the Missourian will remember a recent well-presented story of the life and arts of Dr. Jean Chapman. In it, Vernon Chapman, the doctor's father, was referred to as "uneducated." Compared with today, Vernon Chapman may have lacked some formal education, but all of us who knew him recall him as a very learned man, a great model to follow when we continue to flounder about searching for the best schooling.

He had grown up with the "infrastructure" of the Third District Normal School long before that fancy popular word was used. His skill with relations of those about him was just a marvelous as his art with faucets and light bulbs, and those who knew him during some period of his long career continue to miss him.

When he visited me one evening and I asked advice for building a winding, outside, concrete stairway and expressed my timidity at beginning such a project, he said, "Peter, you can do it." I began the next day and since then have used the stairs almost daily.

All of the other apostles of those years when I was first here spoke with warmth of Vernon Chapman. Barbara Rust remembers that her father, Dean Rose, said that Vernon Chapman understood the turbines and generators better than the engineers who represented the manufacturer. Vernon Chapman graduated from that same engineering school which taught Orville and Wilbur Wright to design and build an airplane and gave the brothers flying lessons.

After he retired, he bought a set of Britannica and began reading and had arrived at the M's when he closed the book. As I think of those years which belonged to him, it seems that the space of time between Columbus and the beginning of the Normal School in 1873 is not greater than the life of Vernon Chapman. He and others like him bring us to the millennium.

PETER HILTY

Cape Girardeau