an evangelist, Brown accepted a position as president of Scarritt College in Neosho. His two years as president were instrumental in developing his plan to establish his own college. However, Brown felt that the strong emphasis of that school on education without the benefit of life training was harmful to the students. As he said in 1903, "It might be my privilege to have a part in the building of school that would turn the minds of youth back from this exaggerated concept of the value of book knowledge, to the realization that all this is valuable only as it becomes a background for, or the foundation under, the real things of life."
=== Early years: presidency of John E. Brown Sr. 1919–1948 ===
Maintaining this goal of establishing a college that would provide an interdenominational, Christian education for needy students, who like himself, might not have had a chance of receiving an education, Brown laid the foundation in 1919 for the institution that would later be called John Brown University, John E. …
