Sanderson, Eugene C

From Lane Co Oregon

The University of Oregon wasn’t the only institution of higher learning founded in Eugene. In 1895, Eugene C. Sanderson (1859-1940) opened the Eugene Divinity School in a ten-room house he rented for seven dollars a month, adjacent to the UO. “For the first three years I was president, faculty and janitor,” Sanderson told the Oregon Journal in 1924. He believed that for a Bible school to survive, it must be located near a larger university — and it appears he was right. Today the full-fledged institution of 500 students, across Kincaid Street from the UO, is known as Northwest Christian College. Although a stern and serious man, Sanderson was not unable to appreciate humor — especially if it came from his wife, Prudence. In a typewritten remembrance, family friend Dr. C.H. Phillips tells how the college president was at times so often away on fundraising business that his wife rarely saw him. So she phoned his secretary one day, posing as a donor, and made an appointment. When she came to the office, Sanderson asked what she was doing there. She produced a dollar as her donation and replied that this was the only way she could get to see him, Phillips wrote. “As usual, he was amused because ‘Prudy’ had done it.”

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