President Abegg: A lifetime of “giving back”

From the April 1991 issue of Hilltopics

MARTIN G. “JERRY” ABEGG ’47 spent a lifetime “giving back” — trying to repay society, through service in education, for the opportunities he received.

Seaman Jerry Abegg

Seaman Jerry Abegg, 1943

Jerry grew up in Colorado, one of 13 children in the family. He graduated from high school in Denver in 1943, in the middle of World War II, and promptly enlisted in the Navy. He and his mother had great hopes of his acceptance into the V-12 program (the Navy’s officer training program), but the 17-year-old overslept and missed his chance to take the required exam. Disappointed, he entered the service as an enlisted man, completed boot camp, and was sent to service school in Detroit. But while he was there the Navy changed its policy and, for the first time, gave enlisted men the opportunity to take the exam. He passed, and the Navy sent him to the University of Illinois to study civil engineering. There he met his wife-to-be, Barbara Chamberlain.

Jerry first saw the Bradley campus in March 1945. Barb was visiting her grandmother, who lived on Underhill, and he decided to visit them. He hitchhiked to Peoria from Champaign, and upon arriving in Peoria took the streetcar to her house. Its route took him right past the campus: up Main Street to Bourland, south to Bradley Avenue, over to Western, and back down Main. With the war on, things were quiet then; enrollment was about 400. By the fall of 1946, once the war was over, it was 2,600.

Upon his discharge from the Navy, Jerry and Barb were married. Unable to find housing in Champaign, Jerry enrolled at Bradley Polytechnic Institute and received his bachelor’s degree in general engineering in August 1947.

Degree in hand, he had two job offers: to go to Panama and work for United Fruit Co., or stay on at Bradley and teach for a year. With just a bachelor’s degree, today he would never be considered for the teaching job. But at the time, with the post-war enrollment boom, there was a great demand for instructors. He decided to take the less lucrative opportunity and teach at Bradley, in part to “repay a favor,” since the government had sent him to school. An instructor of engineering at age 21, one month after earning his degree, he was younger than almost all of his students that first year. The timing of events gave him a definite career advantage: he had a three- to four-year career head start compared to most others who had been in the service.

As the returning veterans began to complete their degrees and leave the University, Jerry knew that to continue teaching he had to go back to school for his master’s degree. With the G.I. bill available to help pay for it, he packed up Barb and 6-month-old Marty and went back to school — this time at the University of Colorado. He earned his master’s degree in civil engineering in June 1951 and returned to Bradley.

An exciting professional opportunity came about through Dr. Joseph Chamberlain, Barb’s brother, who was an astronomer and director of a planetarium in Hayden, N.Y. A New York engineering firm was putting together two crews, each made up of one astronomer and one engineer, to do geodetic work on a distant warming line in the Arctic stretching from Baffin Island in the east to Point Barrow, Alaska, in the west. They were to find the positions for and build a series of self-contained units to serve as communications links and radar installations. The work would take two-and-a-half months, January through March of 1956, which cut across two semesters of Bradley’s calendar at the time. Jerry got permission to go and arranged for a graduate student to cover his classes. Then the firm decided to use another engineer from New York. But that engineer backed out two days before it was time to leave, and Jerry got an emergency phone call: could he come after all? Leaving Barb and their two small children, he flew to New York for a one-day briefing and then on to the Arctic. He and Dr. Chamberlain worked together for ten weeks, locating installations for eight sites across the 2,500-mile frozen expanse.

Abegg surveying with Chamberlain
Left: Surveying in the Arctic summer — at 10:30 p.m. Right: Chamberlain and Abegg, the astronomer and the engineer.

Always planning for the future, Jerry decided he needed to return to school once again, this time for the Ph.D. He had discovered how to pay for it: he did more work for the same New York engineering firm in the summer of 1957, worked at an air base in the Azores in the summer of 1958, and did work on beach erosion on Long Island in the summer of 1959.

He took a year’s sabbatical and a year’s leave. He used the money from these engineering projects, and Barb worked. He enrolled at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York and, with the help of his advisor, was able to complete the Ph.D. in civil engineering in just two years, September 1958 to June 1960. “You couldn’t do it in two years today,” he says. “You would get trapped in a research project.”

The timing again was fortunate. When Jerry returned to Bradley with his doctorate, the civil engineering department chairman who had hired him in 1947 decided to return to full-time teaching and asked him to take the post. Successfully balancing administrative and teaching duties, he won the Putnam Award for Excellence in Teaching in 1961. Jobst Hall was new, and Jerry and Dr. Frank Gryna wrote a successful grant proposal to the National Science Foundation for $45,000 to equip the civil engineering labs — one of the first grants the College of Engineering ever received. It was a first foray into fundraising for him; in those days there was no Development Office, so any money that was needed had to be raised by the faculty or the dean.

In 1963, Russ Gibbs, who had been dean since 1946, retired. The committee conducted an unsuccessful search for a new dean; then they approached Jerry and offered him the position, which he held for the next seven years.

President Talman W. Van Arsdale took a six-month medical leave in the fall of 1970 and Jerry was named acting president after Thanksgiving. Van Arsdale decided not to return. A committee was formed to search for a new president. After two weeks they decided to poll the faculty to see if Jerry would be acceptable, and he was installed as president in June 1971. He had been at Bradley for 25 years.

The late 1960s and early ’70s was a time of unrest all across the country, and Bradley was no exception. Students wanted the University to allocate more money to buy books for the Library. To call attention to their cause, they each checked out as many books as they could — virtually emptying the shelves. When their demands were met, they brought the books back. In protest of the racial situation and the Vietnam War, students took over the Student Center, causing a great deal of damage, and held sit-ins to stop reconstruction work on Bradley Hall. Adding to the general climate of unrest was a large number of students who were enrolled to escape the draft; when the college student deferment was lifted in 1970, 500 to 600 students left immediately.

This was the Bradley University that came under the leadership of Martin G. Abegg in 1971. The first tough decision he had to make concerned football. It was an expensive program: games were played at Peoria Stadium on the north side of town, and students did not attend the games. The matter had been studied for some time but no decision had been made. Jerry cut the program. Next, faced with declining enrollment and financial pressures, he had to eliminate 125 University positions. They weren’t easy decisions, but with the reduced enrollment they helped balance the budget.

During his presidency, Jerry was approached several times with other career opportunities, but always had something he wanted to complete at Bradley. “The University is in sound financial shape, the Campaign for Bradley has funded substantial campus improvements, enrollment is strong, academic quality is high, and the University’s strategic plan for the future is almost complete. It is a good time for new leadership,” he says.

“The University is in sound financial shape … enrollment is strong, academic quality is high, and the University’s strategic plan for the future is almost complete. It is a good time for new leadership.”
—President Martin G. Abegg, 1991

Never one to seek the limelight, now that he has announced his retirement Jerry hopes to “just fade away” and “leave the way I came — quietly.” Following someone with such long and strong ties to alumni, faculty, and the community, the new president will need the opportunity to “build a place” at the University. And Jerry Abegg does not plan to be available to look over his or her shoulder.

Abegg fishing

Abegg fishing outside his Door County, Wisconsin, cabin.

Jerry and Barb will spend as much time as possible at their cabin in Wisconsin, finishing many chores that have been waiting for his retirement. Although Jerry would have liked to build it all himself, due to time constraints they had the shell of the cabin built by a contractor in 1978. He has done the rest: finished the cabin, added on, built a barn and a storage shed for woodworking, and built much of their furniture. Starting from scratch, over the years they have customized the cabin so it is actually more convenient than their house in Peoria.

Barb does “wood gardening,” landscaping around the house with tress transplanted from elsewhere on their three acres; has an herb garden with basil, parsley, and mint; and grows strawberries and black and red raspberries. Their land is on a limestone shelf, with only eight inches of soil, and the trees are mostly softwoods like cedar, birch, spruce, and popple (a poplar). The roots are shallow and the trees blow over easily, which provides a never-ending supply of wood for the shop and the wood-burning stove. There is fishing; the shoreline is rocky, and the lake is shallow near the shore and conducive to wading.

It’s a much simpler life than that of University president. They pick up the fallen trees and either cut them into firewood or take them to the sawmill to be rough trimmed; Jerry planes them to dimension-size lumber himself, and lines the paths of the wood garden with the shavings. Barb enjoys woodworking too, and they work together on Christmas presents for their grandchildren and other projects. A self-taught carpenter, Jerry says with a smile, “If I don’t get it right the first time, I start over — sometimes two or three times!”

They will spend six to seven months a year at the cabin, and travel. Two years ago they bought a 24-foot recreational vehicle, which Jerry describes as “a delightful way to travel.” Sometime in the next year or two they plan to travel around the country, “following the sun” and setting their own schedule.

They also plan to visit their grandchildren, and have the grandchildren spend more time with them at the cabin. Their older son MARTY ABEGG ’72 and wife Susan have two children. Marty is finishing his Ph.D. in Semitic languages at Hebrew University in Cincinnati. BOB ABEGG ’74 and his wife Susie, and their three children live in Dallas, where he is a minister at a small church.

Professionally, Jerry is keeping his options open. He may return to college teaching; consultants have suggested that he could serve as an interim president at universities that need leadership in a time of transition; or he may substitute teach in an elementary school.

Teaching would be a natural choice. “I will always treasure my associations with students,” Jerry says. As many faculty members who have made a long-term commitment to the University have found, it is rewarding to see the number of former students who have gone on to successful careers. “Faculty and students develop an affection for the institution through their associations in the classroom,” he says. With more than 45 years as a student, faculty member, and administrator, Jerry has developed a deep affection for Bradley University — and many alumni and colleagues have developed a deep affection for him.