MOUNT PLEASANT, Iowa — Winds of change sweep across this idyllic southeast Iowa community of 9,000, where an Amtrak station separates an old-fashioned town square from a charming college campus.
But the hospitable temperature and blue skies in early May belie this picturesque slice of Americana. After 181 years, Iowa Wesleyan, the small Methodist institution of nearly 800 students located 30 miles west of Illinois and 35 miles north of Missouri, will shut down for good. With the school unable to pay a $26 million loan to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the property becomes part of the federal government.
A proud university inaugurated five years before Iowa became a state now is relegated to the history books.
“On May 31, that’s when it’s probably going to really hit me,” says Mike Hampton, a 1972 Wesleyan graduate who has worked in the athletic department since 1995. “My wife graduated from here. I graduated from here. … It’s in the two-digit numbers of relatives that graduated from here. It’s a sad state of affairs.”
Of course it’s more than athletics that perishes with the school on May 31. Astronaut Peggy Whitson, a 1981 graduate, became the first female commander at the International Space Station in 2007. She wore purple Iowa Wesleyan Tigers socks…
