Karl G. Maeser was certainly one of the most refined and educated men to join this Church
in the first fifty years of existence.
Several years after Brother Maeser’s death a proposal was made to construct a memorial
building in his name, not downtown on University Avenue but high atop Temple Hill, where a
new campus might be built consisting of as many as three or perhaps four buildings someday.
The faculty and student body did take heart that in 1912 the Maeser Building was at least
partially complete and the university would give diplomas to its first four-year graduating
class.But even as graduation plans were being made, equally urgent plans were underway to
sell the remainder of Temple Hill for the development of a new Provo suburb. The university
simply had to have the money to survive. The graduation services would conclude with a
sales pitch to the community leaders in attendance.
When Alfred Kelly was introduced that morning as the student speaker, he rose and stood
absolutely silent for several moments. Some in the audience thought he had lost the power
of speech. Slowly he began to speak, explaining that he had been much concerned over his remarks,
that he had written several versions and discarded every one of them.
Then, early one morning, he walked north to where the partially completed Maeser Building
stood He wanted to gain inspiration from this hope of a new campus,
but he felt only grim disappointment.
Kelly then turned his eyes to view the valley below that was also still in shadow.
As morning came, the light gradually worked down from the hilltops, moved across the valley floor,
and slowly advanced to the spot where Kelly stood.
He said he partially closed his eyes as the light approached and was startled by what
he could still see. He stood as if transfixed. In the advancing sunlight everything he saw
took on the appearance of people, young people about his age moving toward Temple Hill. He
saw hundreds of them, thousands of young people coming into view. He said he knew they were
students, because they carried books in their arms as they came.
Then Temple Hill was bathed in sunlight, and the whole of the present campus was illuminated
not with one partially completed building, not with homes in a modern subdivision, but
with what Kelly described to that graduating class in 1912 as “temples of learning,”
large buildings, beautiful buildings, hundreds of buildings covering the top of that hill
and stretching clear to the mouth of Rock Canyon.
The students then entered these temples of learning with their books in hand. As they
came out of them, Kelly said their countenances bore smiles of hope and of faith. He observed
that they seemed cheerful and very confident.
Kelly sat down to what was absolutely stone-deaf, rock-solid silence. Not a word was spoken.
What about the sales pitch? No one moved or whispered. Then longtime BYU benefactor Jesse
Knight jumped to his feet and shouted, “We won’t sell an acre. We won’t sell a single
lot.” And he turned to President George Brimhall and pledged several thousand dollars
to the future of the university. Soon others stood up and joined in, some offering only
a widow’s mite, but all believing in the dream of a Provo schoolboy, all believing
the destiny of a great university which that day had scarcely begun.