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Bethel’s sixth president dies at 101
By Melanie Zuercher Bethel CollegePage:
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NORTH NEWTON, Kan. — Bethel College has lost a man who bridged most of the college’s history.
“The reason I’m still alive,” David C. “D.C.” Wedel told well-wishers who gathered to celebrate his 100th birthday in 2008, “is because God is afraid of me asking too many questions.” — Photo provided by Bethel College
David C. “D.C.” Wedel, 101, Bethel’s sixth president, died Jan. 13 at Bethesda Home in Goessel.
Wedel once reminisced that he had “shaken the hand of every Bethel president but the first one” (Cornelius H. Wedel, no relation).
D.C. Wedel served as Bethel’s president from 1952 to 1959.
Wedel also recalled being among those who carried the bricks that the mason used to build the walls of Science Hall (now called Old Science Hall). Completed in 1925, the year Wedel graduated from Bethel Academy, Old Science is the second-oldest building on campus after the original structure, the Administration Building.
Wedel, originally from Goessel, taught at Heimbaugh County School and coached Goessel High School basketball in 1927-28. He graduated from Bethel College in 1933. He earned a bachelor’s degree from Colgate Rochester Divinity School, Rochester, N.Y., in 1936. From 1936 to 1946, he served as pastor of First Mennonite Church in Halstead, with a brief hiatus to be director of the Civilian Public Service camp in Marietta, Ohio, in 1941.
In 1946, Bethel President Edmund G. Kaufman invited Wedel to come to the college as acting dean while the current dean took a sabbatical.
After that, Wedel went to Denver to get his doctorate in Christian education from Iliff School of Theology. He wrote his dissertation on “The contribution of C.H. Wedel to Mennonite education.” D.C. Wedel once said, “There’s no way of estimating the influence Bethel College has had on the Mennonite church.”
Wedel also wrote a history of Alexanderwohl Mennonite Church, The Story of Alexanderwohl, published in 1974 by the Goessel Centennial Committee. He was named Bethel’s Outstanding Alumnus for 1982.
After his term as Bethel president, Wedel served as an administrator at Southwestern College, Winfield, Kan., from 1959 to 1967. He then served several years as associate director of development at Bethel.
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