Arnold "Squeak" Wedel
Obituary
Longtime college professor Dr. Arnold
M. "Squeak" Wedel died on June 30, 2018, in North Newton. A
mathematician, he devoted his life to the vision of North Newton's
Bethel College as a first-rate liberal arts institution on a par with
the best in the country. Besides his family and mathematics, he was
passionate about Mennonite values and genealogy, peace research,
following the stock market and the Boston Red Sox.
Bringing the spirit of an iconoclast to
nearly everything he did, Wedel pushed past barriers to achieve what
might seem impossible. With scant resources, he built a nationally
recognized mathematics program, developed a cooperative math program
with four area colleges and brought to Bethel both world-renowned
mathematicians and peace activists such as folksinger Pete Seeger,
Nobel Prize winner Mairead Corrigan and Daniel Ellsberg of Pentagon
Papers fame. Together with his wife, Dolores, he helped lay the
groundwork for infrastructure - both for residential development in
North Newton and for Dolores' family maple syrup business in her
northern New York childhood home.
Arnold was born in Lawrence in 1928,
when his father was pursuing a master's degree at the University of
Kansas. Both of his parents were of Swiss Mennonite ancestry,
speaking "Schweitzer," a Germanic dialect; his grandparents
had migrated to Kansas in the 1870s from what is now Ukraine.
During the Depression, his father
secured a job as a math teacher and moved the family to Holdenville,
Oklahoma, where Arnold spent his elementary school years playing
saxophone and violin and grading his father's students' exams. With
no other Mennonites in Holdenville, Arnold was baptized and raised in
the Methodist church.
When his family returned to Kansas and
settled in North Newton, he took up sportswriting at Newton High
School but skipped a year in high school and college. He graduated
from Bethel College in 1947 and earned a master's degree from the
University of Kansas in 1948 and a Ph.D. from Iowa State College (now
Iowa State University) in 1951, specializing in statistics. A few
months later, Arnold joined the Bethel faculty, only to be drafted in
1953 and to serve two years in I-W service as a hospital admitting
clerk in Denver. There he met his future wife, Dolores Lehman, who
was working as a nurse at another hospital.
Returning to Bethel, Wedel resumed his
teaching career and recruited faculty in math and other fields.
Within a decade, he had attracted a stable powerhouse of young math
scholars to the college. Under his leadership, the mathematics
program grew and thrived.
He introduced and coached students
taking the annual premier national undergraduate math contest, the
William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition, or the Putnam. The
successes of Bethel students regularly vastly exceeded those of
students in comparable colleges: Five of Wedel's students placed in
the top 100 in the nation and one year the team ranked 14th in the
nation; the 1964 team is legendary
(https://ml.bethelks.edu/issue/vol-67/article/the-year-bethel-made-the-sweet-16-in-mathematics/).
This was an astonishing achievement for a tiny school competing
against the largest and most prestigious universities with unlimited
resources and supposedly top-flight talent.
During Wedel's tenure, Bethel graduated
more than 150 math majors; 15 subsequently received a Ph.D. in math,
with others earning doctorates in other fields.
Wedel wrote the "Joy of
Mathematics: The Mathematical Adventures of Herman Bubbert" (a
fictitious character renowned in the Bethel community and beyond). He
used this text to introduce non-math majors to the wide range of
mathematical thought, history and theory. He served the Kansas
section of the Mathematical Association of America as chairman as
well as governor, and was granted its meritorious service award. A
room at the Mathematical Association of America headquarters in
Washington, D.C., is christened the Arnold M. Wedel Room.
Citing statistics showing the United
States falling behind in math competency, Wedel led an effort to put
a mathematician on a U.S. postage stamp. Math concepts should be
introduced along with crayons in preschool, he believed, and he
campaigned relentlessly to bolster elementary and secondary
education.
Besides mathematics-related endeavors,
Arnold was a genealogy aficionado known for his expertise in the
history both of his own Swiss Mennonites and that of Dolores' family
with Amish roots. He served as president and vice-president of the
Swiss Mennonite Cultural and Historical Association. His curiosity
and skills also prompted an interest in business and finance and he
was recruited to serve on the boards of several local corporations.
Arnold was a long-suffering Boston Red
Sox fan. His love of Ted Williams, the outstanding Red Sox rookie in
1939, likely sparked the enthusiasm for this boy growing up in Kansas
and Oklahoma, which persisted throughout his life. In 2003, in honor
of his 75th birthday, he threw out the first pitch at a Red Sox game
at Fenway Park. Only a year later, the Sox curse was broken as the
team finally won the World Series.
Throughout his life, Wedel sought
opportunities that enabled him to integrate ideas from the larger
world into Bethel's curriculum from big, marquee institutions as well
as from small colleges. He took sabbaticals at Cornell University
(New York) on a National Science Foundation faculty fellowship and
Rice University (Texas). During other sabbaticals, he taught at
Ottawa University and Goshen College (Indiana). After participating
in a history of math course at Catholic University in Washington
D.C., he led an effort to get math at Bethel integrated into its
proper division - humanities.
Wedel spent summers traveling to
recruit students and teaching at other universities - the University
of Kansas, Mankato State College (Minnesota), Lehigh University
(Pennsylvania), Knox College (Illinois) and Emporia State University,
among others. Many later summers were enjoyed with Dolores in her
childhood community of Castorland, New York. They also took pleasure
in their avid pursuit of square and round dancing in Kansas and New
York.
Wedel was preceded in death by his
parents, Edward B. Wedel and Kathryn (Wedel) Wedel; only sibling,
Elaine (Ozzie Goering); and eldest child, Dr. Suzanne Wedel (died in
2016, Marblehead, Massachusetts).
He is survived by Dolores Lehman Wedel
(North Newton), his wife of 63 years; son-in-law, Dr. Alasdair Conn
(Marblehead, Massachusetts); two children, Janine Wedel (Washington,
D.C.) and Edward (Ted) Wedel (Melissa Manda, Jefferson City,
Missouri); five grandchildren: Kathryn Conn (Dr. Arun Nair, Austin,
Texas), Christopher Conn (Emily Comstock, Baltimore), Alexander Conn
(New York), Meredith Manda Wedel (PaloAlto, California) and Michael
Manda Wedel (Hannover, New Hampshire); a community of former students
spread across the country and the world; and, of course, the
legendary Herman Bubbert.
Services will be held at 10:30 a.m.
Saturday (Aug. 18, 2018) at Bethel College Mennonite Church.
Memorials may be made to the Arnold M.
Wedel Scholarship Fund, Bethel College; or KIPCOR, the Kansas
Institute for Peace and Conflict Resolution, Bethel College.
