By Babatunde Jose
“Don’t judge a book by its cover.” You’ve heard that expression so many times. The gross-looking brown apple just may be a delicious one, or beyond that old and peeling storefront there may be gorgeous clothes. We can never know what lies beyond the exterior until we check it out. The proverbial warning “do not judge a book by its cover” may hold true for relationships and life.
The Bible said: “Do not judge by appearances, but judge with right judgment.” John 7:24 .
The story of Stanford University is axiomatic of this expression.
A lady in a faded gingham dress and her husband, dressed in a homespun threadbare suit, stepped off the train in Boston, Mass. USA and walk timidly without an appointment into the Harvard University President’s outer office.
The secretary could tell in a moment that such backwoods, country hicks had no business at Harvard University and probably didn’t even deserve to be in Cambridge University.
“We want to see the president,” the man said softly.
“He’ll be busy all day,” the secretary snapped.
“We’ll wait,” the lady replied.
For hours the secretary ignored them, hoping that the couple would finally become discouraged and go away. They didn’t and the secretary grew frustrated and finally decided to disturb the president, even though it was a chore she always regretted.
“Maybe if you see them for a few minutes, they’ll leave,” she said to him.
He sighed in exasperation and nodded. Someone of his importance obviously didn’t have the time to spend with them, but he detested gingham dresses and homespun suits cluttering up his outer office.
The president, stern faced and with dignity, strutted toward the couple.
The lady told him, “We had a son who attended Harvard University for one year. He loved Harvard University and he was happy here. But about a year ago, he was accidentally killed. My husband and I would like to erect a memorial to him, somewhere on campus.”
The president wasn’t touched…. He was shocked.
“Madam,” he said, gruffly, “we can’t put up a statue for every person who attended Harvard University and died. If we did, this place would look like a cemetery.”
“Oh, no,” the lady explained quickly. “We don’t want to erect a statue. We thought we would like to give a building to Harvard University.”
The president rolled his eyes. He glanced at the gingham dress and homespun suit, and then exclaimed, “A building! Do you have any earthly idea how much a building cost? We have over seven and a half million dollars in the physical buildings here at Harvard University.”
For a moment the lady was silent.
The president was pleased. Maybe he could get rid of them now.
The lady turned to her husband and said quietly, “Is that all it costs to start a university? Why don’t we just start our own?”
Her husband nodded.
The president’s face wilted in confusion and bewilderment. Mr. and Mrs. Leland Stanford got up and walked away, traveling to Palo Alto, California where they established a university.
They founded ‘Leland Stanford Junior University’ as a memorial for their only child, Leland Stanford Jr., who died as a teenager of typhoid fever in Florence, Italy, in 1884 while on a trip to Europe. The university was established by March 9, 1885, Endowment Act of the California Assembly and Senate, and the Grant of Endowment from Leland and Jane Stanford signed at the first meeting of the board of trustees on November 14, 1885. It would later be referred to as simply – Stanford University.
The Stanfords donated approximately 40 million United States Dollars to develop the university, which held its opening exercises on October 1, 1891, and was intended for agricultural studies.
Its first student, admitted to Encina Hall that day, was Herbert Hoover, who went on to become the 31st US president. The wealth of the Stanford family during the late 19th century is estimated at $50 million.
You can easily judge the character of others by how they treat those who they think can do nothing. It was a monumental error on the part of the President of Harvard.
Leland Stanford was born in 1824 in what was then Watervliet, New York. He was one of eight children of Josiah and Elizabeth Phillips Stanford.
After being admitted to the bar in 1848, Stanford moved with many other settlers to Port Washington, Wisconsin, where he began a law practice. In 1850, Stanford was nominated by the Whig Party as Washington County, Wisconsin district attorney.
On September 30, 1850, Stanford married Jane Elizabeth Lathrop in Albany, New York. The couple did not have any children for years, until their only child, a son, Leland DeWitt Stanford, was born in 1868.
In 1852, having lost his law library and other property to a fire, Stanford followed his five brothers to California during the California Gold Rush. He served as a justice of the peace and helped organize the Sacramento Library Association, which later became the Sacramento Public Library.
In 1856, he and Jane moved to Sacramento, where he engaged in mercantile pursuits on a large scale. He was one of the four merchants known popularly as “The Big Four” and were the key investors in the Central Pacific Railroad which was incorporated on June 28, 1861, and Stanford was elected as its president.
Stanford ran unsuccessfully for governor of California in 1859. He was nominated again in 1861 and won the election. He served one term, then limited to two years.
In May 1868, he joined others in forming the Pacific Union Express Company. It merged in 1870 with Wells Fargo and Company. Stanford was a director of Wells Fargo and Company from 1870 to his death in June 1893.
Also in May 1868, he started the Pacific Mutual Life Insurance Company (now Pacific Life) and served as its first president from 1868 to 1876.
He is widely considered a robber baron. He owned two wineries, the Leland Stanford Winery in Alameda County founded in 1869, and the 55,000 acres (223 km2) Great Vina Ranch in Tehama County, containing what was then the largest vineyard in the world at 3,575 acres (14 km2) which was given to Stanford University.
His Palo Alto horse breeding farm was what was later developed into the Stanford University, the university was nicknamed “The Farm.”
Their only son Leland Stanford Junior was born in 1868.
Stanford was politically active and became a leading member of the Republican Party. In 1860, he was named a delegate to the Republican National Convention in Chicago but did not attend. He was elected governor in a second campaign in 1861.
He was the eighth Governor of California, serving from January 1862 to December 1863, and the first Republican governor. Later, he served in the United States Senate from 1885 until his death in 1893.
This was the man the short-sighted President of Harvard looked down upon. Thanks to providence, that incident led to the founding of one of the best universities in the United States. Indeed, ‘never judge a book by its cover’.
Don’t look down on others. The superiority complex is why we have so much division in the world today. The superiority complex, the overly righteous in heart, causes nothing but division.
Ihdinas-Siraatal-Mustaqeem: Show us the straight way,(Quran 1:6)
Barka Juma’at and a lovely weekend.
