The Cold War’s Ground Zero: Westminster College and the John Findley Green Foundation Lectureship

In July 1945, while on a fishing holiday on Minnesota’s North Star Lake, Westminster College President Franc L. McCluer, had a casual conversation with his wife Ida Belle. Though the scene was tranquil, McCluerknown by the nickname “Bullet” for his rapid-fire debating style—was consumed with thoughts about the college’s John Findley Green Foundation Lectureship. After a three-year hiatus, when the all-male college saw reduced enrollment due to the war effort, McCluer hoped to revive the fledgling but promising lecture series that previously had brought international luminaries to his Fulton, Missouri campus.

The endowed lectureship was established in 1937 by Mrs. Eleanor I. Green of St. Louis to honor the memory of her husband, a Westminster alumnus. The aim of the Green Foundation Lectureship was then, and remains today, to present lectures that would promote “a better understanding of economic and social problems which are international in their concern.”

“How about Winston Churchill?” Bullet McCluer blurted to his wife as they sat in the north woods pondering the question of who would give the 1946 lecture. After a pause Ida Belle responded affirmatively, “What do we have to lose?”

And so, with that exchange in a fishing boat in rural Minnesota, Bullet McCluer fired the first shot in his campaign to invite Winston Churchill to Fulton. He followed with a two-month barrage of conversations, planning, and an intercession by President Harry S. Truman. All told, it set the stage for the start of Cold War rhetoric.

On 3 October 1945, McCluer signed a one-page, typewritten letter on Westminster College letterhead inviting Churchill to Fulton. At the bottom of the page the President of the United States added an encouraging note: “This is a wonderful school in my home state. Hope you can do it. I’ll introduce you. Best regards, Harry Truman.”

Historians agree that President Truman’s famous postscript is the chief reason Churchill accepted McCluer’s invitation. After all, Churchill responded directly to the White House, not Westminster College. Still, in his carefully crafted letter to the former prime minister, the Bullet of Westminster wrote with a mixture of prescience and flattery that appealed to the statesman: “We know that any discussions coming from you and delivered from this forum here in the heart of the United States