By Wayne W. Byers
Just recently I stood in the basement of the Wisconsin Academy Administration Building, that is now under construction, and listened as Elder Bieber explained the room layout and showed where the various classes would be held. As I listened, my mind kept wandering back to my own academy days. I could see teachers, classmates, classes, and chapel periods.
With fond nostalgia I remembered some of the good times we had together and events that helped to direct my life. I have often wondered, as I did then, what it would have been like not to have had the experience of a Christian education and a life without those wonderful memories. I couldn’t really imagine any such a thing, because my parents had no other plans. Later on that same day as I was preparing to leave the school, I watched a young man with a hammer in his hand climb a ladder to the top of the building where he was to help with the roofing.
As I waved goodby to my son who was working on that new building, I couldn’t help but feel happy that he was right where his mother and I have always planned for him to be—in one of our academies. It seemed good to me that he could have an active part in helping to build the Administration building, the central building of most any school, and so badly needed at Wisconsin Academy. Doubtless, someday he with many others will look back and say proudly, “I helped to build that building.” They might also truthfully say, as others have confessed, “It helped to build us.” It would stir our hearts to greater liberality if we would look at this building, not just in terms of wood, stone, plaster, and steel, but a place where our youth will be developing talents—a place where they will be building personalities and Christian characters for service in this life and the life to come. In Eccl. 3:1 we find the words of the wise man who said, “To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven.” In verse three he mentioned the fact that there is a time to build up.” If there was ever a time to “build up,” it is now when so many of our youth are seeking a Christian education. Can we afford to fail them by holding back the necessary funds with which to “build up”? We cannot, we must not, and if we are truly sincere in our devotion to the cause of God, we will not fail!
This article originally appeared the Lake Union Herald, October 13, 1959
The photos accompanying this article are from the 1960 Badger, our yearbook
