My Friend, Dan Chamberlain

By Chuck Massey

I had the good fortune of arriving to teach at the Houghton College at the beginning of the fall semester, 1976, at the same time Dan Chamberlain arrived to begin his long tenure as president. After a year of teaching in the education department, I served for three and a half years as dean of students and seven years as dean at the branch campus in West Seneca. Over the next 26 and a half years I spent time teaching, developing special projects and programs in adult education, distance education and service education, with a special focus on race, culture and gender issues and inequities evident in urban centers such as Buffalo, New York. During the 30 years I was at Houghton under Dan’s leadership, he served as a mentor who guided and prodded and pushed me; he allowed me to pursue my interests when he could reconcile those with larger interests of the college. He introduced me to new people and new ideas and challenged me to state my views and defend my positions even when they were unpopular.

Dan believed strongly in the place of “dialogue” at Houghton—in faculty meetings, in classrooms, residences, the dining hall and, on occasion, even in chapel. In 1980, with Dan’s encouragement and financial assistance from The Wesleyan Church Department of Educational Institutions, I edited a booklet titled “The Christian College and Community Standards: Beginning Dialogue in Search of Understanding.” “Dialogue” as used here requires a profound love for the world and its inhabitants and an attitude of humility and respect. This booklet was distributed at all five Wesleyan institutions. Dan knew meaningful dialogue needed to extend beyond our statement of community standards and as such, he was willing to summon an outsider to visit campus and challenge our thinking. One of his friends who visited campus during Dan’s second year as president challenged my worldview while expanding the campus dialogue exponentially.

Dan Knew meaningful dialogue needed to extend

beyond our statement of community standards…

Ronald Sider, author of Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger and a colleague of Dan’s from Messiah College, shared his global perspective on wealth and poverty and his biblical perspective on the poor and possessions. This, combined with his challenge to move toward a simpler lifestyle, provided an interesting counterbalance to “prosperity theology” and “trickle down economic theory” competing for attention from students, faculty and the local Wesleyan church at that point in time. I am still struggling to balance the biblical call for equity, justice and mercy and the American preoccupation with wealth and security. The dialogue, begun nearly fifty years ago, continues today.

Dan was a wonderful storyteller, but an equally good listener. This may explain why students welcomed the opportunity to join him and Joyce for conversation on their regular and frequent visits to the college dining hall. I did wonder at times how a man who held such strong anabaptist values and was inclined toward “peace” would so willingly go to war on a racket ball court. I was also impressed with his frugality and came to understand that he was as watchful of the institution’s resources as he was of his own. Anyone who traveled with Dan on college business came to understand this. He wasn’t inclined to look for five-star hotels, and the salad bar at Wendy’s was a presidential meal.

Friendship with Dan for more than 30 years was a special gift for which I will always be thankful!