Published: June 28, 2008 08:51 pm            

MARK BENNETT: ISU’s presidential pick Bradley makes impressive decision to live in Condit House

TERRE HAUTE — Some evenings, students saw Richard Landini picking up a stray piece of trash off the lawn.

He hated litter. He loved Indiana State University. The students knew that, because he lived there, literally. Landini’s home for all of his 17 years as the university’s president was the stately Condit House, right in the middle of campus. He let former President Gerald Ford sleep in the guest room, after delivering a lecture. A wake for Landini’s wife Phyllis was conducted inside the house.

“The front door was open for students, and the back door was open for friends,” recalled John Newton, the long-time executive director of ISU Alumni Affairs.

Landini, Newton explained, “was president 24 hours a day.”

Landini retired in 1992, and died in 2004. But one segment of his collegiate lifestyle is about to be rekindled at a pivotal moment in its history. Daniel J. Bradley, who was selected last week to become ISU’s 11th president, intends for he and his wife, Cheri, to live in the Condit House. He’ll be the first ISU president to do so, on a full-time basis, since Landini.

“I just think that a college campus without a president residing on it is kind of a hollow place,” Bradley told Tribune-Star education reporter Sue Loughlin. “It makes campus a different place when the president lives there.”

Bradley hasn’t even officially taken office yet, with the board of trustees expected to approve his hiring on July 9, but he’s already made an impressive decision. It can’t be written off as merely symbolic. The Bradleys will actually be living on campus, along with the 3,000 resident students. When problems arise, President Bradley will be easy to find.

The students will notice, said Newton, who emphasized his strong support for the past two presidents who chose to live off campus — John Moore, who succeeded Landini in 1992, and Lloyd Benjamin, whose eight-year stint officially ends Monday.

“The students would see it more so than anyone else, that they’re in this thing together — not only within the campus community, but the community of Terre Haute,” said Newton, now in his 35th year as an ISU staffer.

With a young family, Moore briefly lived in the Condit House when his presidency began, while their home south of Terre Haute was being built. The Condit House had its living quarters converted into administrative offices, while also maintaining a museum-like atmosphere. When Benjamin succeeded Moore in 2000, Condit House kept that mix of office space and artifacts as Benjamin also chose a house south of Terre Haute.

Actually, only two other ISU presidents — Landini and his predecessor, Alan Rankin — ever resided in Condit House.

The home was built in 1860, five years before ISU was founded, and contains historical items and furnishings left by Helen Condit. Today, it is registered as an Historic American Building with the U.S. Library of Congress and the Smithsonian Institution. Helen Condit called that Italianate structure home her entire life, from 1874 to 1962.

“She basically lived her life here, and watched the campus grow up around her,” said Teresa Exline, university spokesperson.

After Condit’s death, it was given to ISU, and became its Office of Alumni Affairs until 1966, when the university’s new president decided to live there. The rear portion of the building was expanded. The Rankins hosted teas for student groups, receptions for dignitaries, and distinguished alumni gatherings, Newton recalled.

“It was their home,” he said.

When Rankin retired and Landini and his family arrived in 1975, they also made that spot on campus their home.

It’s significant that Bradley, currently the president of Fairmont State University in West Virginia, will revive that tradition. ISU is in the midst of regrouping itself after a tumultuous period as the school struggled to curb a declining enrollment, mend divisions between administration and faculty, and plot a new, distinct niche among the state’s public colleges.

At the very least, Bradley’s plan to live on campus boosts morale. It begins a tighter bond between the president, the faculty, the students and Terre Haute.

“It’s kind of reassuring the president trusts the city enough and the people on campus enough” to live there, said Charles Parker, an ISU junior from Youngstown, Ohio.

“I think it allows the president to have a closer feel to the campus,” said Parker, a 25-year-old pre-pharmacy major.

The building already has security equipment, which will be reassessed as it transforms back into a residence, Exline explained. Some other renovation will also be necessary as those administrative offices, including Exline’s, move to an undetermined location.

On Wednesday afternoon last week, Benjamin sorted through papers in his Condit House office and wrapped up his last working day as president. He said Bradley’s plan to live in the Condit House “can be done. It’s certainly a grand place.”

The incoming president’s choice to reside in that “grand place” enhances the possibility that more people will use that same phrase to describe ISU.



Mark Bennett can be reached at mark.bennett@tribstar.com or (812) 231-4377.

        

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