How Harper College got its name

The population boom in Chicago's Northwest suburbs and baby boomers coming of age raised the question of whether the region could - or should - support a local community college.

The effort would face a multiyear, statewide battle, with opponents questioning both the financial impact and quality of education. Throughout Illinois, eight referendums proposing to establish community colleges went down in defeat between 1960 and 1964.

The continuing efforts of supporters finally paid off in March 1965, however, when voters in Elk Grove, Palatine, Schaumburg and Wheeling townships approved establishing the new school.

But what to call it?

Urgency to settle on a name had grown by the time the first president, Robert Lahti, took the helm that September.

Paddock Publications, which would later become the Daily Herald, held a "name the junior college" contest. Its list of recommended finalists included: Adlai E. Stevenson Junior College, Paddock Junior College, Shabbona (the chief of a Pottawatomi tribe that previously inhabited the area) and Euclid (representing both the famed Greek mathematician and the street that would eventually serve as the College's northern border).

Also receiving a handful of votes were Elkspaw (Elk Grove, Schaumburg, Palatine and Wheeling townships combined) and Salt Creek.

By one account, Harper Trustee Jessalyn Nicklas, a former professional singer with the popular Wayne King Orchestra, suggested William Rainey Harper. Harper was the first president of the University of Chicago and widely acknowledged as the father of the national community college movement.

The idea resonated with Lahti and the board, and William Rainey Harper College was officially adopted in April 1966.

At the October 1967 groundbreaking ceremony at Roselle and Algonquin roads in Palatine, dignitaries took handfuls of soil drawn from the campuses of three of the major institutions in which William Rainey Harper was affiliated - Muskingum College in Ohio, Yale University and the University of Chicago - and mixed it with earth at the Harper College construction site.

The institution has embraced its namesake, channeling the renowned scholar's propensity for vision and innovation. William Rainey Harper is a physical fixture on campus, as well, as his bust sits atop a pedestal in the middle of the campus' highly trafficked quad.

• This is part of a series of stories from Harper College to run occasionally during the current school year.