University YMCA · 1001 S. Wright St., Champaign, IL 61820
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John W. Price, a Methodist minister and career student YMCA secretary, led the University YMCA's work with students from abroad for 18 years, from 1950 to 1968. He built the International Student Program of suppers, welcome weekends, bus tours and a Little United Nations, met new students at the station and found them rooms, and became, for thousands of them, the first friend they made in America. He then served the University's foreign student office and its Rehabilitation-Education Center until 1976. The Y's John W. Price Award for international understanding has carried his name since 1989.
John Wilderman Price was born on Sept. 16, 1909, at Minden Mines, Missouri. He grew up there and in Pittsburg, Kansas, where he finished high school.12 He took a B.S. at Kansas State Teachers College in Pittsburg in 1932 and taught high school mathematics in Torrington, Wyoming, for two years.21 He then went to Yale Divinity School on a scholarship to study religious work with students, and took his B.D. in 1937.12 That summer he and two other Yale divinity students traveled in Europe, meeting the leaders of the World's Student Christian Federation in Geneva and attending the German and British student Christian conferences.3
In September 1937 he became general secretary of the YMCA at the California Institute of Technology, its first full-time secretary in three years.45 At Caltech he ran a freshman camp, coached the freshman basketball team, visited every student in the hospital, and held a Thursday-evening "Town Meeting of the Air" discussion group in his home. In two years the Y's program more than doubled.678 On June 17, 1939, he married Elizabeth Hodgkin at St. Mark's Episcopal Church in Berkeley.92
From 1941 to 1945 he directed the student YMCA and the men's program at People's Church in East Lansing, the community church that served Michigan State College's students. He was ordained a Methodist deacon in 1942 and an elder in 1944.21 From 1945 to 1950 he was executive secretary of the University of Minnesota YMCA, and in 1948–49 he chaired the Midwest Student YMCA Secretaries' Conference.52 In the spring of 1950 he took 43 foreign students from Minnesota to spend a weekend as guests of a small Minnesota town, the kind of visit he would make a staple at Illinois.10
After his years at the Y (see below), Price worked for the University. He was a counselor in its Office of Foreign Student Affairs from the fall of 1968, and from 1973 to 1976 he was an assistant in program administration at the Rehabilitation-Education Center.11121 He and Elizabeth then retired to Crestone, Colorado. There he helped with the international students at Adams State College, served on the board of the San Luis Valley Handicapped Center and was for two years chairman of the Saguache County Democratic Party.1 Throughout his life he belonged to the Urban League, the NAACP and the Fellowship of Reconciliation.1 He died at Alamosa, Colorado, on Dec. 21, 1988, at the age of 79, and was buried there.1
General Secretary Pete Ingalls brought Price to the University YMCA in 1950. Hannah called it "a good day."13 He was introduced that October as the Y's new program director, and at first his work was general: he started freshman discussion groups with faculty leaders, joined Ingalls and Del Wedel in a small-group counseling program, and led the student cabinet's spring retreat in a discussion of "What Can We Believe?"14151617 But, as the Y's paper put it in 1952, he "could spend all his time (if our budget could afford it) working with students from abroad."16 The YMCA's year books list him as program secretary from 1951 to 1959 and as associate secretary from 1960 to 1968. At the Y and on campus he was the director of its international student program.52
Price took the work begun in 1918 and greatly enlarged it. Its story is told in the history of the International Student Program. Under him:
In 1953 a grant from the Sears-Roebuck Foundation let him give all his time to the work.2820
He also took part in the Y's religious program. He preached at the campus foundations and in small-town churches, spoke on "Christianity and Communism," and joined the Y's weekends with visiting theologians.2930
In May 1958 Price arranged and hosted the visit of Soviet youth officials to the University under the new U.S.-Soviet student exchange.31 The next summer he led a delegation of 11 American college students, chosen by the national student YMCA and YWCA, on a 40-day tour of the Soviet Union, and he opened the fall 1959 Faculty Forum with a talk on it, "The Individual in a Collective Society."323334
In November 1961 the Y's board raised the money for a three-month leave, and he and Elizabeth set out to visit former students around the world. They returned in February 1962 after meeting almost 400 alumni in 21 countries.353637 In 1966 he took 13 Illinois students to a work camp in an Indian village.3839
On the 1959 Southern Tour, when a restaurant in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, refused to serve one of the students, the whole group of 38 walked out. The next spring, during the sit-ins, Price planned the route to avoid trouble.4041 In October 1962, at the invitation of the NAACP chapter's president, he spoke to the Student Senate for a resolution against discrimination in student housing: "The life of a student is in his housing."42 That spring he and Elizabeth signed a Champaign-Urbana peace petition with other campus clergy.43
Not every student group welcomed his firm hand. In 1964 officers of the Association of International Students said he kept too much control over the Y's programs, among them his rule keeping the press out of the Little U.N. Price answered that students on government scholarships could be put at risk if they were quoted disagreeing with their own countries, and other students wrote to the Daily Illini in his defense.444546
In May 1968 Price resigned to become a counselor in the University's Office of Foreign Student Affairs. "Part of the international program went with him," Hannah wrote.3837 Peters calls his departure "the end of an era" for the Y's international work.37 He was replaced on the program staff by Robert Scarborough.47 At the University he ran the tours, the Christmas party at Allerton, loans and scholarships, hospital visits and the winter-clothing closet.48 When the office cut his position in 1972, students campaigned to keep him, and he moved to the Rehabilitation-Education Center.494812 He kept serving the Cosmopolitan Club's Thursday international dinners, and in May 1976 students and friends saw him off with an open house there before he left for Colorado.5051
"One of the greatest ventures for any college student can be yours—that of building a personal friendship." — The Intercollegian, 195552
"Everybody was somebody to Christ. As someone has remarked, 'He never saw "masses." He saw Faces.' ... we too are trying to see Faces." — The Y's Indian, 196039
"Unfortunately the average American student is not particularly interested in the international student, his problems, his country or the future relationship of our country with his." — the Daily Illini, 196053
"The life of a student is in his housing." — to the Student Senate, 196242
"Many of the students I know have gained new insights and have made new resolves." — to the peace writer Kirby Page, from Minnesota, 194654
At Caltech in 1940: "His confidential and friendly counseling which is always available to students is one of the most important services."6
Harold Hannah counted him among the staff members, with Henry Wilson, Mic Coldwell and Ed Nestingen, "who did not keep hours," without whom the Y's story would have been ordinary.55
A student from abroad, arriving in 1957 after no one met him at the ports: "It was only at the corner of Green and Wright streets that John Price ... was present to welcome me."56
The Daily Illini, 1962: "John Price and Ed Nestingen are particularly vital to the student program."57
Students from abroad, protesting the cut in his University job in 1972: "He was the first University member to welcome us here." "He has always gone out of his way to humanize the University."48
Harold Hannah, 1973: the University's foreign student office "could not supply the human touch which was supplied by John Price and the YMCA." Price "dealt with foreign students in depth, not superficially. In turn they could sense his concern and sympathy and knew they had a friend." When the program declined after 1968, it was "primarily ... because John Price is no longer there."5838
Scott Peters, 1997: students "developed a deep appreciation for Price's personal concern and respect, which they carried with them after they returned to their home countries." He set Price beside Ed Nestingen: "Just as John Price reached and engaged international students ... so Ed Nestingen reached and engaged a generation of undergraduates."3759
Both of the Y's published histories are on this site, page for page. Each link goes to the page where he appears.
Harold W. Hannah, One Hundred Years of Action (1973)
Scott J. Peters, The Promise of Association (1997)
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