Preface to the Bicentennial Edition, 1975 Time has made visible and invisible changes in Jefferson County and in Fairfield between the first publication of A Fair Field in 1968 and the Bicentennial years of 1975-1976. Some old landmarks have disappeared. Stalwart red-brick Logan Grade School, built in 1889, was closed in 1972 and torn down. Unaccustomed quiet reigns over the empty school yard. Old Lincoln Grade School, built in 1906, closed in 1975, was promptly razed; but a new Lincoln School on the old grounds was ready to welcome a flood of children for the 1975-1976 school year. No railroad carries passengers to or from Fairfield any more. After Amtrak took over the passenger trains, service to Fairfield ceased on May 1, 1971. Only intercity busses serve Fairfield. Community accessibility has declined. There is better accessibility for the handicapped, how-ever, to stores and offices around the square. Fairfield is one of the first Iowa cities to construct ramps. These may seem unimportant to many, but not to those who need them. The edifice of the Church of Christ, Scientist, on East Burlington Street, was bought by the city in October, 1968. Part is used for Park and Recreation offices, part for recreation and meetings, so its useful work goes on. The new Park and Recreation Board was created in 1973. Board and staff supervise Woodthrush Park, now a state preserve, and Perlee Woods Park, 4 1/2 miles northeast of Fairfield, as well as Lamson Woods Park, Chautauqua Park, and O. B. Nelson Memorial Park in Fairfield. The O. B. Nelson Park name honors the former Parsons College football and basketball coach who stimulated sports interest in Fairfield from 1949 until his death in 1968. The park itself, along Highway 1 in south Fairfield, is especially popular. It contains the community swimming pool dedicated in 1968, ball diamonds, and well-equipped playgrounds. The Park Board plans a new neighborhood park in northwest Fairfield, to be named in a contest. The sudden death of Parsons College in June, 1973, was traumatic for Fairfield. In spite of the catastrophe, many people felt that somehow the college could be brought back to life. The sale of the complete Parsons library, heavily mortgaged, to the University of Houston, Texas, destroyed their last hope. Fairfield leaders, financed by state as well as local money, searched for some institution which would take over the campus. Months passed; the college grounds grew up into weeds; the buildings showed signs of degeneration. The seekers began to despair, since the whole United States was in economic recession. Then Maharishi International University made tentative inquiries about the availability of the campus. Gordon E. Aistrope, President of the Jefferson County Savings and Loan, led a campaign to persuade MIU to settle in Fairfield. Local fears that MIU would teach a strange religion were in the main allayed by public explanations from representatives of MIU of Transcendental Meditation and the Science of Creative Intelligence. These teachings, the background of MIU's proposed liberal arts curriculum, were shown to be not courses in a new religion, but methods taught to expand individual consciousness and social consciousness. The university, established two years earlier in Santa Barbara, California, moved teachers and some 500 students en masse to Fairfield in the fall of 1974. Dr. Robert Keith Wallace of Los Angeles came as President, and Dr. Robert Winquist of the University of Hawaii as Executive Vice-President. From the first glimpse of the crowd of young people disembarking from their busses, Fairfield hearts warmed to them. In an era of "hippies" with torn and patched jeans, scraggly hair and bare feet, the newcomers were neat in dresses and suits; their hair was trim and their feet were shod. Better still, they were well-mannered, friendly, and anxious to refurbish the campus.