Westminster College Gymnasium
By the 1890s, a competitive athletic program had begun at Westminster: football in the fall with baseball and tennis in the spring. After an 1888 renovation of Westminster Hall, a gymnasium occupied the third-floor attic space above the chapel. The 1909 fire that destroyed Westminster Hall left the college without either a chapel or a gymnasium. By 1920, Swope Chapel addressed the spiritual needs of the college community, but funding a gymnasium proved more challenging. The trustees approved plans for a new structure, going so far as to hold a ground-breaking ceremony in the hopes of interesting a major donor in the facility. Had their strategy succeeded, the gymnasium would have been located along Stinson Creek, near or on the site of Coulter Science Center.
The gymnasium was ultimately constructed on the hill between the new Westminster Hall and Washington West, the President’s residence. At the time of its dedication in 1929, this Classical Revival style structure was one of the largest and best equipped gymnasiums in Missouri, but its historical importance lies elsewhere. On March 5, 1946, Sir Winston Churchill delivered a speech entitled “The Sinews of Peace” in which he stated that “an Iron Curtain has descended upon the [European] continent”, marking the first time the phrase “Iron Curtain” had been used.
The idea to invite Churchill to Westminster came from its president, Dr. Franc McCluer. Major General Henry Vaughan, a Westminster classmate of McCluer’s , was a military aide at the White House. He discussed the plan with President Harry Truman who endorsed it and added a handwritten note to the invitation offering to accompany the former Prime Minister to Fulton and to introduce him at the event.
Churchill’s acceptance of the invitation created great excitement not just in Fulton or even Missouri, but throughout the United States. The speech was broadcast nationwide on radio; newsreel cameras captured the event on film; and reporters busied themselves asking questions of anyone remotely knowledgeable about the event. A staff writer for a St. Louis newspaper posed a question to her readers: “What would YOU serve if Churchill and Truman were coming to dinner?” For President McCluer’s wife Ida Belle who was in charge of luncheon preparations, there could be only one answer: “Callaway country ham specially smoked over a hickory-log fire by the farmer who personally raised and butchered the hog”* Churchill apparently appreciated her menu choice; not only did he ask to have some Callaway hams shipped to him, he complimented the hostess stating, “The pig has reached its highest point of evolution in this ham!”
Note: Much of the information in this post was taken from Dr. William Parrish’s history of Westminster College, especially Chapter 13, “The Churchill Visit.”