Dr. D. Elton Trueblood was a Quaker scholar, teacher and author born in Pleasantville, Iowa, in 1900. He graduated from William Penn College in Oskaloosa, Iowa, in 1922. He did graduate study at Harvard University and received his doctoral degree from Johns Hopkins University. He taught at Guilford College, Harverford College and Stanford University, where he also served as chaplain. He surprised many people by giving up his professorship at Stanford to accept a job as professor of philosophy and religion at Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana, in 1946. He believed students could do better at a small college where they were in smaller classes and had closer relationships with their teachers, a point he made nationally with his Reader's Digest essay, "Why I Choose a Small College." He was a friend of Herbert and Lou Hoover, who often stayed with him, and a friend of Billy Graham. He wrote more than thirty-three books, including The Predicament of Modern Man, Alternative to Futility, and his autobiography, While It is Day. Elton Trueblood died in Lansdale, Pennsylvania, in 1994. These papers were given to the University of Iowa Libraries by Elton Trueblood in 1949 (Common Ventures of Life) and in 1956 (Declaration of Freedom).