March 27, 2013
Having come to MPA in 2002 from a school that celebrated it’s 100th anniversary while I was there, and prior to that, a school that celebrated it’s 75th, it was a thrill to be working among many of this school’s living founders. At those previous celebrations, we could only imagine what the founders had in mind through reading archival material. Here, we can actually ask them what it was like and how MPA came to be.
It has been my pleasure over the years to have been able to get to know founding MPA director Bob Kreischer, whose portrait hangs today just inside the main south entrance of the school. I recall digging it out of a closet and insisting that it hang in a place of honor so that all those students passing it every day would be reminded of the essential role he played in making their education here possible.
Recently, I sat down with Bob to ask about those beginnings – for posterity – so that future generations, and many of the readers of this blog who would not have known Bob, could be touched by the story of the school’s beginnings. I leave it to future videographers to complete the project with interviews of those who stood with Bob in those early remarkable days.
Mike Downs
