Alumni Spotlight

Eugene McGraw '32

On a Mission

Eugene McGraw '32 during his missionary days.

When Eugene McGraw ’32 began building and selling radios in his freshman year of high school, he had no idea that his interests would take him from his small farming home in Centerville, Ind., to a position as a physics lab assistant at Earlham and eventually to a job coordinating building projects in Malaysia. After graduating from Centerville High School in 1927, McGraw had a desire to attend college and study an eclectic combination of religion and physics. He would become one of Earlham’s first graduates in physics and would mentor many other physics students during his time there.

In 1927, it cost $100 per semester to attend Earlham as a full-time student. Despite the low tuition, McGraw’s farming family could not afford to send him without assistance. A German professor at Earlham made an affordable arrangement with McGraw, which enabled him to attend college. McGraw reaped the benefits of Earlham’s unofficial work-study program in its incipiency. Each semester, the College gave him a $25 scholarship, and paid him an additional $25 to sweep the library floors every morning at 7 a.m., before his classes began. Living only five miles from the college, he could live at home and bring a sack lunch to school. He commuted to school in a Model T Ford, which he rebuilt himself from a defunct frame. The car cost him a grand total of $15. As a student who did not live in the dorms, McGraw became part of the informal club, “Day Dodgers Den,” for the 15-20 men who lived at home but attended Earlham. They met in the basement of Tyler Hall every day to eat their sack lunches and store their books in lockers.

By his third year at Earlham, McGraw had moved from sweeping floors to working as a lab assistant to a recent physics graduate. “We had no physics professor that year, so she came in to help. Together, we were like the near-blind leading the near-blind,” he jokes. At the end of his third year, he received a letter stating he was the “top man in his class,” as he recalls. As a result, he earned a full-tuition scholarship for his senior year. That year, Earlham began to pay him 35 cents an hour to continue as a lab assistant.

He graduated from Earlham with a double major in physics and religion. Unsure of which direction to take, his career path was determined by a $500 scholarship to study at the Oberlin Graduate School of Theology. After he earned a Bachelor of Divinity from Oberlin in 1935, the Methodist Board of Missions asked him to travel to Malaysia and teach English. McGraw recalls with a grin that an Earlham course in education had made him say, “Education is not for me!” Despite this aversion to the formal study of education, he enthusiastically took the position of teacher (and future principal) of a small village school in Malaysia. It was in Malaysia that he met his future wife, Louise Leonard, a Massachusetts native. Upon her arrival in Malaysia, Louise’s piano skills caused her to be recruited as the organist for the church of which McGraw was pastor. He mischievously recalls it was “a good way to get acquainted!”

During his mission work, McGraw was finally able to bring together his seemingly dichotomous interests: physics and religion. At the end of World War II, he was called back to Malaysia to help rebuild the schools and churches of war-torn villages. He became a district superintendent and a mediator between the villagers and the Bishop, who resided in Singapore. He often had to convince the Bishop that certain building plans were architecturally wasteful and “utterly inappropriate for that area.” After the Bishop’s death, McGraw became the coordinator of the rebuilding project. Using skills gained from his physics days at Earlham, he drew up plans for multiple-story buildings as a more efficient use of space. He also imported power tools and began industrial arts courses at the local schools so the villagers could be trained in how to use them.

Now 97 years old, still energetic and “always ready to tell a story,” McGraw resides with wife Louise and their daughter, Bonnie McGraw, on the west side of Richmond, Ind. Their home is richly decorated with ornaments, sculpture and tapestries from their years in Malaysia and Singapore. For fun, they keep intimidating dart-blowers and snake-shaped daggers on hand to astonish and entertain first-time visitors.

Eugene has recently established a scholarship at Earlham in memory of his mother and father, Oliver and Ina McGraw. The scholarship is available for Centerville High School graduates or students from overseas. He explains the reason for the scholarship as this: “I’m grateful to Earlham, I don’t think many students nowadays get paid to study like I did. I figure this might help them out a little.”